The Trump administration really doesn’t want the American public to know how much money the Secret Service is spending to follow Donald Trump and his family around to their various resorts and golf clubs. As part of a plan to bring the Secret Service back into the Treasury Department, Democrats are pushing for a cost disclosure requirement, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is trying hard to keep the requirement from going into effect until after the election.
Democrats want the costs of protecting presidents and their families reported within 120 days. Mnuchin says sure, that can be reported … starting in December 2020. We know a little about what the Secret Service is spending on Trump’s endless trips to Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster, numbers helpfully rounded up by The Washington Post:
- Trump has left the Washington, D.C., area to visit his own properties more than 50 times.
- Trump’s first four trips to Mar-a-Lago cost the Secret Service about $1.3 million apiece, with other government spending on those trips bringing the total cost to $3.4 million per trip.
- That would mean that Trump’s next 22 Mar-a-Lago visits would have cost the federal government $75 million.
- There was one month in 2017 when the Government Accountability Office estimated Trump’s travel costs at $13.6 million. “If spending continued at that pace, Trump would have exceeded Obama’s total expenses [over eight years] before the end of his first year in office,” The Post’s Carol Leonnig and David Fahrenthold report.
- The Secret Service spent $250,000 at Trump’s resorts themselves over a five-month period in 2017.
- Don Jr. and Eric Trump have made business trips to five countries, with Secret Service protection.
No wonder the Trump administration doesn’t want the full picture getting out between now and November.
