President Donald Trump's administration is quietly diverting over $350 million from the Secret Service to pay for "security" elements in the president's White House ballroom project.
According to The Washington Post, the Office of Management and Budget "did not specify the purpose of the unusually large shift in response to questions on Wednesday." However, an anonymous source involved with the budget for the Secret Service "told The Washington Post the funding was to help pay for a new White House East Wing that includes a large ballroom."
The diverted funding was intended to pay for training and retention for Secret Service agents.
A White House spokesperson did not deny this when asked by reporters, saying simply, “The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the President, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets.”
Trump initially promised that the White House ballroom project, which has already seen the summary demolition of the old East Wing, would be paid for entirely by donations from corporate benefactors, which was itself controversial since it opened up the White House to bribery and conflicts of interest.
But in recent months, as the cost of the project has doubled and tripled, the Trump administration has grown more insistent in finding a taxpayer source for at least some of the funding, pushing hard — though unsuccessfully — for "security" funding to be included in the GOP's Homeland Security reconciliation bill.
Federal courts have called out the Trump administration for trying to claim that anything they deem to be a "security" feature in the ballroom project automatically is one and can divert money from elsewhere.