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The US Secret Service spent more than $250,000 at Trump’s properties, over just a five-month period in 2017.
The staggering amount illustrates how much POTUS has personally benefited from the Presidency by still maintaining control of his properties.
‘Donald Trump is enriching himself at the taxpayers’ expense, and we got the documents to prove it,’ says Property Of the People, a non-partisan group that obtained records showing the credit card payments.
The documents show $250,020.94 in credit card purchases at Trump’s properties and businesses between January 27, 2017, and June 29, 2017.
Golf clubs and Vegas
Most of the expenditure took place at Trump’s golf clubs.
The Secret Service also spent over $45,000 at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas in March 2017.
It spent another $32,000 at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the documents show.
Not the first time
The US Air Force has also been using Trump’s Scotland Turnberry resort for housing military personnel, which is now being investigated.
Moreover, there are concerns that foreign governments have been booking rooms at Trump properties to gain his favor. As Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) put it:
“If true, at minimum, this suggests there is a culture of corruption that the administration has created. There’s a sense that to curry favor you have to engage in pay to play. That’s exactly what the American people hate about Washington.”
Remember this is not normal
Making a profit off of the office of president is not business as usual, as Property of the People points out:
In the past, presidents possessing significant business holdings have divested themselves of their holdings or placed them in a blind trust prior to assuming office. President Trump, however, has adamantly refused to do either. Instead, he has placed his business empire into a revocable trust administered by his sons, a move widely viewed by experts as insufficient. The trust is set up to allow Donald Trump to withdraw any amount of money at any time for any reason ‘at his request.’
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