Trump has charged his own Secret Service agents $ 40,000 per Mar-a-Lago room since leaving office.
Former Presidents receive a pension of $ 219,000 per year and initially receive $ 150,000 per year to hire staff.
Former President Donald Trump charged the Secret Service more than $ 40,000 for the use of a room at his private Mar-A-Lago club this spring.
Federal spending records show Trump charged the Secret Service $ 396.15 each night since he left office on January 20. The position is the same as when he served as president.
The charges, ultimately paid by taxpayers, continued until at least April 30, The Washington Post reported. The billing was for the use of a single room used as a workspace by the agents.
Records released by the Secret Service show payments made through April 30. For more than a week after that date, Trump still stayed at the Palm Beach club, before moving into his club in Bedminster, NJ, for the summer term.
It was unclear whether Trump continued to accuse the Secret Service until May.
The records were released following a public records request from The Post. Trump charged the US government at least $ 2.5 million during his tenure.
He appears to be continuing the practice of billing his own guards who need lodging near the former president to protect him.
While Trump was in office, the Secret Service rented four or five rooms in Mar-a-Lago for every night the then-president stayed there, compared to the single room they occupied during his post-presidency.
But since Trump has been spending every night in Mar-a-Lago since he left the White House rather than just on weekends and holidays, the costs of the Secret Service have been mounting.
Ultimately, the agency paid both in 2021 and during comparable periods in 2018 and 2019.
While former presidents receive protection for the rest of their lives, historians have been unable to find an example of a president collecting rent at a similar level to Trump.
While President Joe Biden served as Barack Obama's vice president, he charged the Secret Service $ 2,200 a month for the use of a cabin on his property in Delaware, for a total of $ 171,000 between 2011 and 2017.
The White House told The Post that Biden has not been collecting rent from the Secret Service since he began his tenure.
As a former president, Trump receives a pension of $ 219,000 a year. For the first 30 months after leaving office, former presidents get $ 150,000 a year to hire staff, a sum that drops to $ 96,000 after that initial term.
Trump claims to be a billionaire. Of the Secret Service charges, the director of the Southern Methodist University Presidential History Center, Jeffrey Engel, told The Post: "It's in bad taste," adding: "Just because you can make money doesn't mean that you should earn money. And especially when you have a situation where you are a former president. You are not going to starve. "
While Trump is entitled to taxpayer funding for office space, the General Services Administration told the newspaper: "There is no agreement to pay rent in Mar-a-Lago for any space that the former president is using. in the club".
While most Secret Service agents protecting Trump do not stay in Mar-a-Lago, agents need space near the former president for supervisors, meetings, breaks and communications equipment.
Mar-a-Lago wrote on its Secret Service invoices that the space was "billed at cost." The rent of $ 396.15 per night far exceeds the limit of $ 205 per night for most government employees looking for lodging in the vicinity. The Secret Service can spend more than that limit if its mission requires it.
The cabin rented by the Secret Service in Bedminster cost $ 567 a night while Trump was in office. It has yet to be established whether those charges still apply now that Trump is there as former president.
