Day 788: Trump’s vacations to Florida alone more than double cost of Mueller probe
On top of that, Mueller is more than recouping his costs.
Though he proclaimed while campaigning that he would rarely, if ever, leave the White House if elected, Donald Trump has loved nothing more than frequent vacations since his inauguration.
Those trips on the taxpayers’ dime are adding up.
According to the Washington Post, Trump has taken some 19 trips to Mar-a-Lago during his presidency so far. If the average cost of $3.4 million for the first four trips is extrapolated, that means the president’s vacations have cost taxpayers at least $64.6 million. And that doesn’t count travel to his club in Bedminster, N.J., where Trump goes in the summer.
(And just because Bedminster is closer, doesn’t mean it’s all that much cheaper. He’s still flying there, renting rooms for aides and Secret Service, expensing items and living it up.)
By way of reference, the Robert Mueller probe, which Trump loves to tout as witch hunt and a waste of money, costs far less than Trump’s endless stream of vacations.
Robert Mueller’s investigation has cost just over $25 million in the first 16 months of its investigation, according to CNBC.
The Special Counsel’s Office released new an expenditure report Friday which revealed that the six months between the beginning of April through September cost about $4.5 million. More than half of the total cost is attributed to personnel compensation and benefits.
Moreover, Mueller’s probe is actually managing to pay for itself and then some.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was sentenced for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in September. As part of his plea deal, Manafort agreed to forfeit assets that amount to between $42 million and $46 million, including about $22 million in property, CNBC reports. The case revealed how Manafort avoided paying more than $15 million in taxes by laundering $60 million from pro-Russian Ukrainians, CNN reports.
To add insult to injury, Trump profits on every vacation to a Trump property.
So the Mueller probe has led to the curtain being peeled back on Russian interference in the 2016 election, has led to indictments, guilty pleas and convictions, and presumably has quite a bit more to reveal in the coming weeks and months. All the while, it is running at a profit for the government. Trump, meanwhile, is having a grand time flushing federal dollars and is personally profiting from the government.
788 days in, 674 to go
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