Trump can now loot millions of dollars from the Secret Service
with no disclosure It’s thanks to the plane, oddly.
When he's president, Donald Trump will fly on Air Force One.
Which means the Boeing 757 that Trump owns through a holding
company will be free for use by Ivanka, Melania, Eric, Donald Jr.,
or whomever else. And if Trump requests Secret Service protection
for those people, he will probably get it. And when Secret Service
agents fly alongside a protectee, they use their government funded
resources to pay for their airfare. Which in the case of a flight
on the Trump jet would mean paying Trump for the seats on his
plane.
In other words, by asking for Secret Service protection for
family members who fly on his plane, Donald Trump can directly
funnel taxpayer money into his own pocket.
For any of the Trump or Pence clans assigned a protective detail
due to safety risks— and the rancor of the 2016 vote could well
produce many — Secret Service travel on a Trump-owned plane means
the agency would need to reimburse the aircraft's owner. In this
case, the president.
"So then you have government money going into the pockets of the
president and his children," said Brett Kappel, a lawyer who
specializes in political finance and ethics at Akerman LLP.
Now, you might be saying to yourself that this is ridiculous and
no public official would be so reckless with his political standing
as to loot the Treasury in this manner.
But this is exactly what Trump did during the campaign, billing
the federal government $6 million for granting Secret Service
agents the right to fly on his plane. The reason we know that is
because it was a political campaign, so all the financial details
were filed with the Federal Election Commission. With the campaign
over, however, the plane just becomes part of Trump's opaque web of
privately held companies, so the amount of money he is funneling
from the federal government into his pocket won't be disclosed on
that end.
