June 3, 2021
The U.S. Secret Service is spending nearly $35,000 to rent portable outdoor toilets for the next four months in Bedminster, New Jersey—so that the security detail can be “privy” to former president #45, who reportedly is summering at the Trump Natonal Golf Club.
The cost of the lavish lavatories has been confirmed by federal procurement data reviewed by The Daily Beast.
“BATHROOM TRAILERS BEDMINSTER,” the expenditure states. “A NOTICE TO PROCEED WAS GIVEN ON MAY 24, 2021.” The contract will run through September 30, which works out to rental costs of about $8,500 per month. Imperial Restrooms of Saugerties, New York, is supplying the rolling commodes.
Trump moved in late May from his winter digs at The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, to his Bedminster golf club, sources told CNN. He will reside there until early fall, the outlet reported, citing a senior member of Trump’s team.
On May 22, Trump appeared at a fundraiser at the Bedminster club for Make America Great Again Action, a pro-Trump super PAC run by former campaign manager and longtime adviser Corey Lewandowski. Tickets for the dinner and reception reportedly started at $250,000.
“Even now, taxpayers continue to spend many thousands of dollars to facilitate Donald Trump’s businesses,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington and a former federal prosecutor, told The Daily Beast. “He is, of course, entitled to protection—but from the beginning, it has been about his advancement and convenience, rather than what is good for the country. Forcing taxpayers to spend all of this money for porta potties at a business that surely has sufficient bathrooms is confounding.”
The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment by The Daily Beast.
During his time in office, Trump’s large family and their frequent travel put an unprecedented financial burden on the Secret Service, which in 2017 ran out of money to pay its agents.
Ordinarily, The Daily Beast notes, a former president’s adult children are no longer entitled to Secret Service protection. But before leaving office, Trump quietly ordered an additional six months of security beyond his term for 13 members of his family and at least three Trump appointees: ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; ex-National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien; and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who has come under fire in the past for lavish travel spending on the taxpayer dime.
In the first month after leaving the White House, Trump’s adult children cost taxpayers more than $140,000 in travel costs linked to their Secret Service details.
In 2017, Imperial Restrooms, which says it offers clients “an upscale, portable restroom experience,” was tapped for a three-week bathroom rental at Bedminster, costing taxpayers $7,100. The company has been awarded about $1.2 million in U.S. government contracts over the past four years.
Research contact: @thedailybeast
