Former President Donald Trump was “fleecing taxpayers” while in the White House and taking “the Secret Service to the cleaners” by overcharging for Washington, D.C., hotel stays, according to House Democrats.
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee’s Democrats released a report on what they called “a glimpse into President Trump’s domestic emoluments rackets and pay-to-play schemes.” Trump was accused of taking part in an “unconstitutional art of the steal” during his first and so far only term.
The U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause prohibits presidents from profiting from foreign governments and from taking any money from the U.S. government other than the usual presidential salary.
Friday’s report accuses Trump of forcing the Secret Service to pay “exorbitant hotel charges” while agents were obliged to stay at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to protect members of Trump’s family who were staying at the property. The hotel, which has since been sold and is now the Waldorf Astoria, is located close to the White House.
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“During protective travel, it is necessary for some Secret Service personnel to accompany protectees at all times and in all locations to ensure their safety,” a Secret Service spokesperson told Newsweek. “We are required by policy to use government rates when they are available to ensure fiscal responsibility.”
Eric Trump, the GOP presidential nominee’s son, was quoted in the report as having falsely claimed in 2019 that Secret Service agents stay at Trump properties “for free.” Instead, the report alleges, the Secret Service often paid rates that were far higher than others staying at the D.C. hotel on the same nights.
“Throughout the Trump Administration, The Trump Organization attempted to downplay the amount of Secret Service spending at its properties,” the report states. “However…[Trump] treated the Secret Service not as a gratis friend and guest but as a ‘captive customer,’ using the agency as a fabulously wealthy sucker for whom price was no object.”
The report also says that the Secret Service “approved a waiver to pay a room rate of $600 when the per diem for that month was $201” so that agents could stay at the D.C. hotel during “an apparent stay by Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump, on November 28, 2017.”
“Notably, that very night, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., rented out more than 80 rooms at rates less than $600 per room, including a dozen rooms rented to the Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal Co., Ltd.—which is headquartered in China—for $338.85 each,” the report continues.
Newsweek reached out via email for comment to Trump’s office on Friday.
The report goes on to highlight several other expensive Secret Service stays at the Trump hotel. In one case, the agency paid $895 per night during an Eric Trump stay in February 2018, despite the hotel renting out “more than 100 rooms that evening at rates of less than $895—including at least one room rented out for just $150.50.”
The report also accuses Trump of committing numerous additional violations of the emoluments clause by charging foreign dignitaries and others to stay at the D.C. hotel and other Trump properties while he was serving as president.
“In some instances, President Trump was fleecing the U.S. government for more money in constitutionally prohibited domestic emoluments than he was shaking down from foreign states and monarchs for constitutionally prohibited foreign emoluments,” the report states.
Read the full 57-page report below:
