The U.S. Secret Service is being forced to pay rates as high as $650 per room per night – meaning thousands of dollars a day for teams of agents – and even $17,000 a month to protect President Donald Trump when he stays at his luxury golf resorts. The Washington Post’s David Farenthold reports these charges “show that Trump has an unprecedented — and largely hidden — business relationship with his own government.”
Not only are the rates excessive, but they are a direct contradiction to a claim made by The Trump Organization’s executive vice president Eric Trump, son of the president.
“If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free,” he said last year. “So everywhere that he goes, if he stays at one of his places, the government actually spends, meaning it saves a fortune because if they were to go to a hotel across the street, they’d be charging them $500 a night, whereas, you know we charge them, like $50.”
Trump has spent at least 342 nights at his own properties since becoming president.
Here’s Farenthold explaining what he found:
