The fleecing of America
Voters don’t need a definitive number to know that the rump family is fleecing taxpayers
THE STATE DEPARTMENT has reported that it has about
450 pages (
State Department signals it will keep most details of its spending at Trump’s properties hidden until after election ) of records detailing its spending at properties owned by President Trump. The public has a right to this information. The State Department, responding to a public records lawsuit brought by The Post, said in August it would try to produce 300 of the pages by Oct. 15.
Want to guess how many pages it actually coughed up that day? Two — that’s right, a paltry two pages. No explanation was provided and, in a further thumb in the eye to the public’s right to know, the State Department signaled it has no plans to release more until mid-November. That is, of course, after the election that will decide whether Mr. Trump gets another four years in office. The State Department’s stonewalling is part of an overall effort by the president and his administration to keep secret how much public money has gone to his businesses, again raising troubling questions of what Mr. Trump is hiding. It’s also a sign of how he is infecting the entire government with his contempt for the law and the public.
The repeated refusal by federal and Trump Organization officials to provide information about government spending benefiting Mr. Trump’s properties — and often underwriting the travel of his adult children — prompted The Post to undertake an effort, led by reporter David A. Fahrenthold, to compile its own tally by using Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit to obtain receipts one at a time. So far, The Post has found more than $1.2 million in federal money paid to Mr. Trump’s company, largely for hotel rooms and other expenses for aides and Secret Service agents when Mr. Trump visits — which he does with frequency — his own properties.
The lawsuit filed by The Post in June alleged that the State Department had improperly withheld all records responsive to eight public record requests submitted over the previous three months. Under the law, federal agencies are required to respond to requests in 20 business days, followed by prompt delivery of documents. Of the 450 documents the State Department catalogued as responsive to The Post’s requests, it produced just two documents showing $8,316 paid to the Trump Organization’s Doonbeg golf club in Ireland for a visit of Trump’s daughter-in-law and campaign adviser Lara Trump. Redacted from the records was the rate per room the organization charged federal taxpayers. Good guess it wasn’t the bargain rate Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump once
claimed is all the organization charges the government.
The Post has asked the court to force the State Department to produce more documents — as it said it would do and as the law requires — before Election Day. Let’s hope the suit succeeds. In the meantime, voters don’t need a definitive number to figure out that Mr. Trump and his family are fleecing taxpayers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ba2ba6-124a-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html