Trump charged Secret Service $30,000 to stay at his Vegas hotel while visiting mass shooting victims: report

On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that a watchdog group's investigation found former President Donald Trump made over $30,000 from his trip to visit victims of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

Specifically, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that Trump used one of his own hotels for the trip.

"Records obtained by CREW through Freedom of Information show the Secret Service spent $31,191 to stay at Trump Hotel Las Vegas on Nov. 1, 2017 for 'POTUS/FLOTUS' — an expense that lines up with the time Trump and first lady Melania visited shooting victims," reported Alice Tecotzky. "Vice President Mike Pence and his wife traveled to Vegas a few days later and also appeared to stay at Trump’s hotel. CREW’s documents show a hotel charge of almost $16,000 on Nov. 2 for 'VPOTUS and SLOTUS visit.'"

During the course of his presidency, Trump had the Secret Service pay at least $1.7 million at various properties he owned. Longstanding ethics rules have required the Secret Service to pay fair market value for services they use while protecting the president, so as to prevent agents from taking advantage of their office — but Trump turned this on its head by having them stay at properties he owned, which allowed his family to make money off the arrangement.

IN OTHER NEWS: David Perdue attacks Stacey Abrams on behalf of Black people: 'She is demeaning her own race'

The 2017 Las Vegas incident was the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States, where a single gunman set up a modified semiautomatic rifle from the window of the Mandalay Bay resort and opened fire on a music festival on the Strip below, killing 60 people and wounding over 400.

The massacre was one of the few shootings in recent years to actually trigger federal policy action, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms instituting a ban on so-called "bump stocks," a device the shooter had used to effectively convert his semiautomatic rifle into a fully automatic machine gun.