Donald Trump overcharged the Secret Service for hotel stays and took in cash from ambassador and appointee stays in an attempt to enrich himself as president, the House Oversight Committee alleged on Friday.
In the 58-page report, authored by top Democrats in the chamber, an 11-month-wide snapshot of Trump Organization finances paints a picture of the former president’s abusing the office for financial gain.
"While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of [the Trump Organization]... it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources," the report shared.
Between September 2017 and August 2018, Secret Service officers protecting Trump’s family routinely paid between $600 and $1,185 a night for stays at the D.C. Trump International Hotel. The rates shattered the standard $201 per diem for government employees and were often nearly double the room rate for other guests, the House committee says.
In one instance, Eric and Lara Trump’s detail paid $600 per room, when on the same night the hotel “rented out more than 80 rooms at rates less than $600 per room,” including a dozen rooms for under $350 to a Chinese mining company.
The Secret Service must house the former president’s security when he makes visits to his D.C. hotel, Mar-A-Lago, and other properties. House Democrats say Trump knowingly took advantage of that obligation.
But it wasn’t just Secret Service stays that Trump cashed in on. The report alleges that Trump profited from foreign leaders and political appointees’ stays, a potential pay-to-play scheme, and an apparent emoluments violation.
The report “reveal[s] significant shortcomings in the current federal anti-corruption framework—shortcomings that Donald Trump exploited to the tune of millions of dollars,” per its authors.
Though the president is bound by the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Oversight Chair Jamie Raskin argues there isn’t currently an accountability measure for Trump’s alleged violations. The top-ranking committee member called the findings “urgent calls to action that Congress must heed to ensure the effective enforcement.”
House Republicans on the committee rebuked the report, with a spokesperson for the group telling Axios that their counterparts “suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
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