Trump complained the Mueller probe has cost $17 million. He's spent more on trips to Mar-a-Lago.
President Trump watched Fox & Friends Saturday morning and tweeted out part of the show's report that, per Justice Department data released earlier this week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election meddling efforts has cost taxpayers about $16.7 million so far.
That's certainly not chump change — but it's also less than Trump himself has spent on his frequent weekend visits to the 'Winter White House," his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
As The Hill notes, analyses from The Washington Post and Politico put the cost of each trip between $1 million and $3 million. At the low end, an estimate of $1 million includes the price of Secret Service protection and travel costs for Air Force One, but excludes additional costs like Coast Guard patrols and transport of presidential limousines.
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Trump traveled to Mar-a-Lago 17 times between his inauguration and April of this year, so even using the $1 million figure, his weekend resort trips have been more expensive for taxpayers than the entire investigation.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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