On Wednesday, writing for The Atlantic, David Graham outlined the new evidence that reveals the extent to which former President Donald Trump used his former hotel in Washington, D.C. to self-deal and gorge on taxpayer money.
"The epicenter of corruption in the Trump administration was not at the White House, but at the Old Post Office, a dramatic Romanesque landmark a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the presidential residence," wrote Graham. "The building, which operated for several years as the Trump International Hotel, became a hot place to see and be seen for a certain set, especially Trump hangers-on (Rudy Giuliani was a regular) and foreign diplomats eager to curry favor — a clear ethical problem. But a new investigation from the House Oversight Committee shows that the problems with the arrangement didn’t end there."
"The Trump Organization also charged the Secret Service as much as $1,185 per night for agents protecting Trump family members — nearly six times the usual allotted rate for government employees," wrote Graham. "In all, the House report found that the Secret Service spent at least $1.4 million in taxpayer money at the Trump International and other Trump properties, and probably more."
This is on top of other instances in which the Secret Service spent huge amounts of money on goods and services at Trump properties, including a $179,000 golf cart contract at Mar-a-Lago in summer of 2020.
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Secret Service rules require them to offer to pay for goods and services at any property where the president and their family are staying, which is ironically in and of itself a federal ethics rule designed to prevent the government from effectively confiscating money from private businesses. But this rule wasn't designed to account for a president who himself owns a large collection of hotels and resorts, and forces government officials to stay at them.
Ultimately, despite all the public money being poured into the Trump Hotel in D.C., which was originally awarded to him in a controversial contract from the General Services Administration, the Trump Organization actually lost $70 million on the property over the four years Trump was in office, including losses from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The Trump Organization went on to sell the hotel to a Miami-based investor group in May of this year.
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