According to the House Oversight Committee chair, Trump properties were charged more than the government-accepted rate by the Secret Service for lodging expenses.
Taxpayers paid at least $1.4 million to the Trump Organization in known expenses for the federal agency, in order to protect Trump, his family members, and other dignitaries staying at Trump’s properties.
Much of what was spent could have cost less for the same amount of protection — in at least 40 instances, the Trump Organization billed the government well past the government rate. For a stay at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Secret Service agents were charged $1,185 per day, five times more than what the government rate (an example).usually between $195 to $240 per night) is supposed to be for such protection services.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic representative from New York, wrote a letter detailing the costs incurred by the agency. She is the chair of the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives.
“The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents’ frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former president’s self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump’s struggling businesses,” she said in a correspondence with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.
Trump famously campaigned for being able provide frugality to White House, including personal travel expenses. He claimed that he wouldn’t even have much time to spend at his properties — yet once he became president, he spent a good portion of his time at them, traveling to places he owned 547 timesAccording to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s (CREW) analysis, they were president.
CREW had also reported that the Trump family’s documented vacation time was 12 times greater than his predecessor’sFormer President Barack Obama, whom? Trump frequently haranguedHe was too busy traveling while he was at the White House between 2009 and 2017.
Trump’s travels to his own properties accounted for many of the 3,700 instances of conflicts of interest Trump engaged in while he was presidentAccording to CREW, it is.
Trump also promised To return to the American people any income he received while president. Yet his earnings documented by Maloney in Secret Service stays at Trump properties alone showcase that any returns of the former president’s salary to taxpayers were almost completely wiped out.
Maloney’s figures, however, are incomplete estimations of how much the agency was billedby the former president. It’s much more likely a higher figure, with other estimates suggesting that at least $2 million was spent by the Secret Service to pay for stays and services while protecting Trump — and it all went directly to the Trump Organization.
Maloney’s figures also do not account for the charges Trump is still billing the agency for his continued Secret Service protection. One estimate indicates that Trump is paying close to $400 per hour in agency feesSince you left office.
Trump’s family members who managed his company during his presidency lied about the degree to which they profited from it. Eric Trump, for example, dismissed criticisms of Trump’s properties spending too much money and claimed that the cost was much lower than it actually was.
“If my father travels, [Secret Service agents] stay at our properties for free,” Eric Trump said in 2019. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government…saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”
In reaction to the latest revelations disclosed by Maloney, CREW noted that Eric Trump’s past comments were knowingly false.
“We knew that” Eric Trump’s claim “was a lie,” the watchdog organization wrote in a tweet, “but we didn’t know just how wild of a lie it was until now.”
