The State Department wouldn’t reveal its payments to Mar-a-Lago. Here’s how we found them.

image (not from article) from

David A. Fahrenthold
Oct. 30, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. EDT 

Excerpt: 

"The question we started with — how much had the State Department spent at Trump’s properties? — was as much a mystery as it was in February. So, two weeks ago, we tried something new. 

We didn't ask the State Department. 

We asked everybody else. ... 

That worked. 

Within a few days, we had obtained documents that showed payments the State Department had never previously disclosed. We reviewed those documents, compared them with documents we had already obtained from other sources and concluded they were authentic. They showed catering bills from Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s summits with Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Included in those bills was a $6,000 charge to taxpayers for floral arrangements during Abe’s 2018 visit. 

And the $3 bill for Trump's water. 

That was a powerful illustration that Trump has set up a hidden business relationship with his own government, which lets him effectively buy services from himself. 

In this case, Trump's club sold the water. Trump drank the water. Then Trump’s club billed the taxpayers." 

But, although that purchase happened 2½ years ago, taxpayers didn’t know until Tuesday. 

The Washington Post asked the State Department for comment on this article on Thursday. It has not responded."

Comments

  1. dnmaxwellNovember 1, 2020 at 7:07 PM

    Just $6,003 spent on floral arrangements and one bottle of water? Considering that Trump was hosting two heads of state(at the same time?) and their teams, a lot more than this must have been spent. I hope a copy of the documents has been retained.

    ReplyDelete

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