The Washington Post found that in order to protect Donald Trump’s adult children while they travel, the U.S. Secret Service has spent $238,000 at the president’s properties. In particular, Ivanka Trump made more than a dozen spring trips to the Trump golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, while the state was under strict stay-at-home orders, having pleaded directly to Americans to stay home on March 30. Over that time, rooms for Secret Service agents cost even more than usual, at $630 per night on average. The Trump Organization, which controls most of the president’s properties, is still owned by Trump, although his sons Eric and Donald Jr. are thought to run daily operations. Eric Trump has claimed in the past that the law does not allow Trump properties to not charge the Secret Service for agents’ rooms, but never specified further. The $238,000 calculation is part of the Post’s ongoing tally of how the president has directly used taxpayer dollars to benefit his own private businesses. In response, neither the White House and the Trump Organization have provided definitive accounting as to how much taxpayer money has gone directly to Trump’s businesses via the Secret Service.
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