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US President Donald Trump has used his office to allocate millions of dollars in US taxes and political sponsorships to his business, according to information obtained by the Washington Post.
“Mar-a-Lago is the White House of the South”
An example of this case is Donald Trump’s welcoming of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by the president. Though the two may meet in Washington, Trump said his Florida business is a more comfortable alternative.
“It is, in fact, the White House of the South,” Trump said at a reception for the Japanese prime minister in front of the press in April 2018.
Trump’s company was paid to host the summit.
In two days, when Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe talked about commerce and North Korea, the extravagant club in Palm Beach, Florida charged the U.S. government $ 13,700 for rooms, $ 16,500 for food and wine, and more. $ 6,000. for roses and flower arrangements.
Trump’s club billed even the smallest services. When the two leaders met alone, with no other food served, the government received a note for what they drank: “Bilateral Meeting” – “Water” – $ 3 each.
Those payments in 2018 are part of a trend that has been going on for a long time and the extent of which has only become clear in recent months, according to the American publication.
In total, since the beginning of the mandate, Trump has received at least $ 8.1 million from events hosted by his political and corporate supporters, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post through interpellations and a lawsuit.
The president brought American taxpayers’ money into his business simply by participating. So far he has visited his hotels and clubs more than 280 times, making them a familiar setting for his presidency. Therefore, the personal property has attracted Republican Party events, including luxury fundraising events for his own election campaign intended to give him a new mandate. On these occasions the major electoral donors go to see them.
Trump says the reason is comfort. “People like my product, what can I tell you, what I can do,” he told reporters last year.
But the documents show that visits by Trump, his family, and supporters have turned the government and the Republican Party into loyal customers of the family business.
Trump’s visits turned the executive into a captive client, according to the documents. What the government needed from Trump’s property was to buy it from Trump’s company.
Since 2017, Trump’s company has taxed US taxpayers for hotel rooms, ballrooms, villas, rental homes, golf cars, votive candles, chandeliers, furniture removals, tourist taxes, decorative palm trees, beef tenderloins, chocolate cake, breakfast buffet, water, bottles $ 88 of wine and $ 1,000 of alcoholic beverages for White House aides.
Additionally, the campaign and fundraising committee has paid $ 5.6 million to its companies since its inauguration in January 2017. These payments – which turned campaign donations into personal income – continued this year as well. while Trump fell in the polls and his campaign was left with insufficient money.
The combined total of these payments exceeded the revenues of Donald Trump’s hotels in Vancouver and Hawaii during the same period, according to the financial statements.
Trump is not prohibited from accepting payments. But the remittances did not violate one of the main promises of 2016: Trump’s promise that he would “completely isolate himself” from his affairs once in the Oval Office and put the interests of voters above his own.
“If I win, I may never see my property again, I may never see these places again. Since I will work for you, I won’t have time to play golf. Believe me,” Trump said on campaigning ever since.
Donald Trump still owns the business, but said he gave his eldest son the power to control it. There is no official total on how much the Trump government and campaign have paid its companies since the beginning of his presidency.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesperson, declined to comment.
“Any suggestion that the president used his official trip or the federal government as a way to profit from taxpayers is an absolute shame and a lie,” Deere said in a statement.
The US publication learned from government spending databases and hundreds of pages of federal expense records, obtained through public inquiries, public information lawsuits, and other means.
While Trump publicly donated his annual salary as president ($ 400,000), he used his power to bring much higher revenue to his business.
Federal officials were in no rush to pay a limited room rate at the Florida club, with the White House authorizing it to spend up to three times as much.
Xi Jinping’s visit to Mar-a-Lago
Foreign leaders wanted the prestige of visiting the US president at his vacation home because they believed they demonstrated a close relationship with the US, two former state officials said on condition of anonymity.
Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“He thought his property was better than any other. And he wanted to make you aware of that,” said a former official.
The rating for that visit to Mar-a-Lago was even higher.
That same weekend, a group of White House employees consumed Patron and Don Julio tequila, Chopin vodka, and Woodford Reserve bourbon for a total of over $ 1,000. Although some emails show that the State Department initially refused to pay, it eventually did, according to ProPublica.
But the most expensive and famous event of that weekend was the official dinner for 30, in which Trump informed Xi of the US missile attack on Syria during the desert.
“The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you’ve ever seen,” Trump later said in an interview with Fox Business.
And taxpayers likely bore the cost: Mar-a-Lago charged $ 7,700 for that dinner, including Trump’s food.
Trump’s visits brought in another client: the intelligence services that protect dignitaries and their families.
When Trump went to Mar-a-Lago for two weeks at Christmas 2019, for example, the club issued a $ 32,400 bill for rooms reserved for the Service.
Additionally, the president’s children over the age of 18 brought in $ 260,000 in taxpayer money when they stayed on Trump’s property with their own security guards.
And in some cases Trump’s property was paid for even on days when he wasn’t there at all.
In Bedminster, New Jersey, for example, the Trump club charged intelligence agencies $ 17,000 a month to rent a mansion from May through November, even on days when the family was away. This is an unusually large figure for that area, but a former Trump administration official said they had to pay for it in case Trump decided to pay a visit.
Trump’s organization has defended itself in the past and said that even if it wanted to, it couldn’t do all of this for free.
“Legally, you have to tax the federal government for something or else you get into all kinds of gift laws,” Eric Trump told Fox News in February. Eric Trump did not specify which laws he was referring to.
Publisher: Alexandru Costea
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