What President Trump's company charges the Secret Service

President Trump's company charges the Secret Service for the rooms agents employ while protecting Trump at his properties. The charges accept been as high as $650 per nighttime for a room at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., or $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Bailiwick of jersey.

Who pays these bills? U.S. taxpayers. That means Trump has a business arrangement with his ain government, which has brought the Trump Organization at to the lowest degree $one.2 million in revenue. But the details of that relationship remain largely hidden.

The Secret Service has released hundreds of documents showing payments to Trump properties, in response to public-records requests and a lawsuit filed past The Washington Post. Merely these documents are often cryptic, with key details redacted. And other federal agencies, including the State and Defense departments, have released far fewer records.

This is how The Post sought to unravel the mysteries in these documents, and to report the true extent of what Trump'due south company has charged taxpayers.

Since Trump took office in January 2017, he has visited his own properties on 355 days. Secret Service agents come with him. And Trump'south company charges them. Last Nov, in response to a public-records request from the group Belongings of the People, the Secret Service released a listing of 56 payments it had made to Trump's companies. All were from 2017. But the list was cryptic. Information technology didn't say what the Clandestine Service had been charged for. In some cases, information technology didn't even say which Trump belongings had been paid.

The Post tried to decode this list. 1 surprise: At least 20 of the payments to "Trump National Golf game Guild" — worth $63,700 — weren't to a golf lodge at all. Other documents, already released, showed that they were payments to Mar-a-Lago. The Mail learned that many of them were hotel bills for $650 per dark — a rate far higher than the usual limits on federal hotel spending. There is no legal limit on what the Secret Service may spend on hotel rooms while its agents are protecting the president.

In 4 other cases, the dollar amount was a giveaway to the location: All included a tax of half dozen.875 percent, which was the sales tax in New Jersey in 2017. That pointed to Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which is the simply Trump holding in New Jersey that Trump has visited equally president.

Just many of the payments on this list remain mysterious.  If you lot have data well-nigh these charges — or any other instances where taxpayer money was used to pay the president's company — contact Post reporter David Fahrenthold at fahrenthold@washpost.com.

Documents

These receipts have been redacted by the Hole-and-corner Service, and they incorporate notations giving the reason for the redactions. The near common notation is "(b)(7)(e)," which refers to a section of the U.S. code that allows the government to redact information about the "techniques and procedures" of law enforcement agencies.

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July 31, 2017 | Bedminster, North.J.

A receipt from the files of the Undercover Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump's Bedminster golf club for July. The rate is $17,000 for the month, plus New Jersey'south 6.875 percentage sales tax. Trump spent 7 days at the club that month, but the Secret Service still paid for days he wasn't at that place. The handwriting in this document is original, written by a Hugger-mugger Service official. The Trump Organization said this rate is less than what it could get on the open market, given that the the cottage has three bedrooms.

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Sept. 4, 2017 | Bedminster, N.J.

A receipt from the files of the Secret Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump's Bedminster golf club for August, plus four days in September. The rate is $17,000 per month, plus New Bailiwick of jersey's half-dozen.875 percent sales tax. Trump spent 16 days there that month. The handwriting in this certificate is original, written by a Surreptitious Service official. The Trump Organization says this charge per unit is below what information technology could become from regular customers, given that the the cottage has three bedrooms.

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Oct. ane, 2017 | Bedminster, Northward.J.

A receipt from the files of the Secret Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump'due south Bedminster golf gild for September, minus four days that had been paid for in a previous bill. The charge per unit is $17,000 per calendar month, plus New Bailiwick of jersey's vi.875 percentage sales taxation. Trump spent 10 days at the society that month, but the Cloak-and-dagger Service still paid for days he wasn't there. The handwriting in this certificate is original, written by a Secret Service official. The Trump Arrangement said this charge per unit is less than what it could get from regular customers, given that the cottage has three bedrooms.

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February 2017 | Palm Beach, Fla.

Receipts released by the Surreptitious Service showing charges paid to Trump'due south Mar-a-Lago Lodge in February — his showtime trip there equally president. Iii of the receipts are in increments of $650, the amount that Trump's company charged the Surreptitious Service for each night in a Mar-a-Lago guest room. The other receipt is for $iii,510; it is unclear what this accuse is for. The Trump Organization has said that the current charge per unit being charged for these rooms is "substantially lower," but did not say what it was.

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February 2018 | Palm Beach, Fla.

Receipts released past the Secret Service to the grouping Public Citizen, showing charges paid to Trump'south Mar-a-Lago Lodge in February 2018. The receipts show Trump's lodge charged $396.15 per night for invitee rooms, less than the year before. The receipts testify this rate was described as "at cost." It is far higher than the figure Eric Trump previously gave as the cost the Trump Organization charges the U.South. government: He said in 2019 that the figure was "like 50 bucks."

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September 2016 to January 2018 | Washington, D.C.

This document, released by the Department of Homeland Security, shows expenditures past the Secret Service's Washington Field Function (WFO) and Dignitary Protection Sectionalization (DPD) at Trump'due south hotel in the city. The document does not requite reasons for these expenditures. Some of them occurred on days when Trump visited the hotel, but nearly did non.

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January to June 2017 | Diverse

This document, released by the Secret Service afterward a public-records request from the group Belongings of the People, contains listings of Hole-and-corner Service credit bill of fare purchases at Trump properties. The documents give a sense of the scale of this spending: more than $250,000 in simply Trump'south first five months in office. Just it provides little clarity well-nigh why the money was spent and what rates were charged. This document was the spark for The Post'southward reporting on this topic — showing how niggling was known about this concern relationship between Trump and his own regime.

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March 2019 | Palm Beach, Fla.

This receipt, obtained by Public Citizen, shows that the Hugger-mugger Service paid $24,615 for rooms at Mar-a-Lago during a 12-mean solar day span in leap 2019. If the club was still charging the charge per unit of $396.15 per night, that would mean the Secret Service rented 61 rooms during that time.

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Wintertime 2017 | Palm Embankment, Fla.

This $22,580 bill from Mar-a-Lago shows the Surreptitious Service paid for 57 room-nights over 18 days in December 2017. Although the check-in and check-out dates are redacted on this document, the Underground Service later said that the check-in date was Dec. ten, and the bank check-out date was Dec. 28. This pecker was obtained by Public Citizen.

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June-July 2018 | Bedminster, N.J.

These receipts, obtained past Public Citizen, evidence the Secret Service continued to rent the "Sarazen Cottage" at Trump'due south holding in Bedminster, North.J., through the summertime of 2018. The rental rate was $17,000 per month, and the receipts show that Trump'due south order was paid even on days when he was not there — or even in the United States. In June 2017, his form billed the government even during his summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

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May 16-May 18, 2019 | Scotland

Trump'south son Eric and his family accept brought the Trump Organization far more taxpayer money than any of Trump'southward three other adult children, according to Hugger-mugger Service records. One major reason: Eric Trump regularly leads members of the company's U.S. golf courses on transatlantic tours of Trump's courses in Scotland and Ireland. His visitor charges Undercover Service agents to follow. In this case, Eric Trump took a group of members from Trump'southward Charlotte club to Scotland, and his company charged the Secret Service for rooms at two Trump courses. The Postal service obtained this document later on information technology filed a public-records lawsuit.

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April 2-May 25, 2020 | Bedminster, N.J.

Trump's girl Ivanka Trump posted an Instagram video on March 29 urging Americans to "please, please" stay dwelling house to avoid spreading coronavirus. After that, she and her husband, Jared Kushner, made 11 trips to the Trump Organization's golf gild in Bedminster, Northward.J., all while New Bailiwick of jersey and their home city of Washington, D.C., were under stay-calm orders. The Trump club charged the Underground Service for the rooms that agents used while protecting them -- even though the club itself was closed for weeks during this period.

David A. Fahrenthold

David A. Fahrenthold is a reporter covering the Trump family and its business organisation interests. He has been at The Washington Post since 2000, and previously covered Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the environment and the D.C. police force.