Trump hotels profit from Trump presidency at taxpayer expense
Trump security officers' hotel nights at Trump Organization properties are billed to taxpayers.
Officially, the Trump Organization, the hotel and real estate conglomerate of the Trump family, houses members of Donald Trump's security team free of charge so as not to benefit financially from the Trump presidency. In any case, this is what the Trump sons, who run the company, have always said.
But the Washington Post obtained documents and invoices from the Secret Service, the federal agency that provides security for presidents, which reveal that the nights these agents spent in several Trump-owned residences were in fact billed and paid for by taxpayers.
Nights at $ 650
When Trump visits his clubs in Palm Beach, Florida or Bedminister, New Jersey, his security team needs accommodation, too. At the Mar-A-Lago club in Florida in 2017, the Secret Service repeatedly paid $ 650 ($ 590) per night for a room and $ 396 per night multiple times in 2018.
Yet in 2019, Eric Trump said: “When my dad travels they stay in our properties for free - it's just the cost of cleaning [...] It saves a fortune because if they went to another hotel , they should pay $ 500 a night, instead we only charge about $ 50 ”.
Trump properties even appear to be offering higher rates to the Secret Service. Trump's Bedminster Golf Club, for example, charged seventeen thousand dollars (15,000 euros) for renting a cottage for a month for the president's entourage, a price much higher than any other rental. in that same city.
This information on the public money received by the Trump Organization was disclosed because several media and associations took legal steps to obtain it. In one year, the Washington Post calculated that $ 471,000 in public money had flowed into the Trump Organization. This is only a small portion of Trump's travel costs for a year, so the total is likely much larger. But the Secret Service is not obligated to divulge all of its expenses in detail.
"It's crazy, we know the president benefits financially from the presidency," said the director of an anti-corruption association in Washington, "but we don't know exactly how much taxpayer money is in his pockets."
