Politics - News Analysis

WaPo: Trump’s Bedminster Club Billed the Secret Service for Charges When the Property Was CLOSED

The Washington Post has done its level best to keep an accounting of the charges that Trump racked-up as president when he visits his own properties, something he has done a whopping 247 times since taking office. No one has yet to get a full accounting of these visits and total charges. The Post says that at best they have to file lawsuits to get one receipt at a time. The self-dealing is even more outrageous given that Trump promised that he would divorce himself entirely from his business while being president (“nothing to do with them”) and continually makes a big show of writing a check for the amount of his salary and paying it back to the government. None of it means anything when he’s milking the government for millions.

This time the Post found evidence that Trump’s club in Bedminster New Jersey charged the federal government for Secret Service rentals of its cottages at a time when the club was closed due to the COVID crisis. The only known trip to the club at the time was Ivanka’s ridiculous “Passover” trip in April, days after she encouraged everyone to listen to state authorities. Like the princess she believes herself to be, the admonition was for little people. Ivanka could do what she wanted. Meanwhile, they billed the government for the trip, and maybe more:

According to the Post:

The documents, including receipts and invoices from Trump’s businesses, were released by the Secret Service after The Washington Post filed a public-records lawsuit. They added $188,000 in previously unknown charges to The Post’s running total of payments to Trump’s properties related to the presence of Secret Service agents.

In Bedminster this spring, the records show, Trump’s club charged the Secret Service more than $21,800 to rent a cottage and other rooms while the club was closed and otherwise off-limits to guests. The documents don’t give a reason for these rentals. Trump didn’t visit the club while it was closed, but his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her family reportedly visited at least once.

And that’s just one isolated period. The Post reports that the Bedminster club alone has charged the federal government over one-million dollars, equating to over half the amount that Trump would make in total salary as president, at one club.

“The waste inherent in this is appalling,” Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said of the Trump Organization’s charges. Gilbert said the costs were especially galling during a pandemic that has brought economic ruin and stretched federal budgets. “They’re nickel-and-diming the American people. At a moment when every penny counts.”

It does take sadistic greed to bill the hell out of the agency that is tasked with taking a bullet for you, making money off their dedication to the country. Trump has had one hell of a day so far:

But no one’s shocked to hear of Trump’s sadistic greed.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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