President Trump's vacations have come with a lot of extra baggage — and it's all being charged to American taxpayers.
It's no surprise that Trump's trips to his properties around the world have been costly, with bills for his Mar-a-Lago trips likely totaling at least $1 million every time he visits. But a new report from The Washington Post details just how exorbitant those charges have been, and how it's not exactly true that the Trump Organization is only charging "minimal fees" for every trip.
Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort charged Secret Service $650 per night per room "dozens of times" throughout 2017 when it was accompanying Trump, "and a different rate, $396.15, dozens more times in 2018," the Post details via documents from the visits. When Trump visited his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, it charged Secret Service $17,000 per month to use a three-bedroom cottage. That's "an unusually high rent for homes in that area," the Post writes, and the government was even billed for days Trump wasn't at the golf club. Those costs all directly contradict Eric Trump's assertion last year that "If my father travels," his government entourage "stay[s] at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping."
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It's unclear just how much Trump's company has charged the Secret Service throughout his presidency. Payments over $10,000 are usually required to be listed on federal databases, but they largely aren't, and publications have had to dig up those records on their own. So while the Post itself has rounded up $471,000 in Secret Service charges from Trump's inauguration through April 2018, there are likely a lot more receipts out there. Read more at The Washington Post.
