The Department of Defense has provided documents that show that the Pentagon has spent more than $184,000 at President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf club in Scotland since 2017, according to the House Oversight Committee.
Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) posted their letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Wednesday criticizing his department’s “woefully inadequate” response to their information requests.
According to Cummings and Raskin, the few documents the Defense Department did provide included the military’s calculation of its total expenditures at Trump’s resort between August 2017 and July 2019, which amounted to $124,578.96.
The committee’s letter said that the Defense Department also cited “an additional $59,729.12” in “unspecified charges to government travel cards.”
Altogether, Cummings and Raskin wrote, the military’s own estimate of its spending at Trump’s Scottish property is more than $184,000 in taxpayer funds.
How much for the fuel purchased at Prestwick? That’s where the real bucks were spent, even if it didn’t go directly to Trump. You know Trump would cheerfully have the air force incur an extra $2mil in fuel costs to bring $200k to the resort.
Wouldn’t you think that our billionaire president would offer to put up our heroic servicemen and -women for free? Wouldn’t that be the patriotic, all-American thing to do?
Obama hated our military. He steadfastly refused to board them at luxury golf resorts in their down time. Fricking America hating pinko socialist Muslim. Just sayin’…
This is obviously the direct cost, which is bad enough…the military basically just gave Trump $184,000. The costs around that, from fuel to spending in the towns around the area, also support Trump’s resort…without a bunch of fuel spending the airport budget would be worse off. The entire point of the Emolument’s clause was to make sure the president didn’t take advantage of their position for their own monetary gain while in office, to save us from policy decisions that would enrich them at the expense of America. The courts are blocking oversight on this at the moment, which is really damn disappointing…they need to get out of the way and allow Congress to pursue this to the fullest degree.
Given that we know that the fuel deal with Prestwick began during Obama’s time, the critical piece of information would be how much was spent at Trump’s resort before he took office. I’m betting that before Jan. 2017, $0 were spent putting soldiers up at the resort.