New documents show that the Secret Service paid Donald Trump's properties $157,000 more in taxpayer dollars than had previously been disclosed. That brings Trump's total revenues from Secret Service stays at his properties to more than $628,000 in total since the beginning of 2017, according to The Washington Post.
The watchdog group Public Citizen obtained the documentation through a public records request it made three years ago. The Post notes that the big picture is still unclear when it comes to exactly how many taxpayer dollars Trump properties have received, since most of the data comes from 2017 and 2018.
In an interview last year, Eric Trump downplayed how much the Trump properties were charging the Secret Service. “If my father travels, they stay at our properties for free — meaning, like, cost for housekeeping,” he said, “We charge them, like, 50 bucks.”
Not exactly. The new documents show that Mar-a-Lago charged the agency $396.15 per room for room rentals in 2017-2019. The receipts also show that Trump's club charged the agency $17,000 per month to rent a cottage in Bedminster, New Jersey, in the summers of 2017, 2018, and part of 2019. "That rate is unusually high for homes in the area, according to local rental listings," writes the Post.