President Trump burnishes Mar-a-Lago and his brand with Florida summit
WASHINGTON — President Trump heads to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday for the sixth visit since his Jan. 20 inauguration, this time for a high-level summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
White House officials say the resort, christened the “Winter White House” by Trump even before he took office, does not charge the government for the use of “meeting space” at his private club. But the high-profile visit continues to burnish the image of the glitzy, oceanfront resort and benefits the president's bottom line.
Trump has refused to relinquish ownership of his real-estate and branding empire. And newly released documents, first reported by ProPublica, show he has retained the ability to withdraw profits and underlying assets from the trust he used to put his adult sons and a veteran Trump executive in charge of his companies.
The trust agreement includes a provision that allows the trustees to “distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request” or whenever the trustees “deem appropriate.” The agreement doesn’t require Trump to disclose when he’s withdrawn money from his companies. During a recent briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said he wasn’t sure whether Trump already had taken payments from the trust.
Ethics watchdogs say that Trump's decision to use his properties for government business and to visit them frequently — whether weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago or shorter jaunts to a Trump-branded golf course in the Washington suburbs — supports their contention that the real-estate tycoon likely is using his perch to fatten his own wallet and imposing a financial burden on the federal government and localities for security costs.
“He’s de facto forcing the federal government and states to produce a Trump Organization infomercial almost every weekend,” said Norm Eisen, who served as President Barack Obama’s ethics lawyer and has sued Trump over his decision to retain ownership of his real-estate and licensing businesses.
Trump’s family and aides point out that previous presidents often traveled to their vacation retreats. Former President George W. Bush made regular visits to his ranch in Texas, while Obama typically headed to rental properties in Hawaii at Christmas. But neither of those were commercial properties, like Mar-a-Lago, where members pay a $200,000 entry fee.
“He’s getting brand recognition as part of being president,” said Lawrence Noble of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.
After a little more than two and a half months in office, Trump already has spent 17 days at Mar-a-Lago.
This week, Spicer indicated that Trump is unlikely to help pay security and travel costs for trips to Mar-a-Lago out of his own pocket.
On Monday, Trump donated $78,333.32 — his salary since taking office — to the National Park Service, as part of his pledge not to accept his $400,000 annual salary.
Asked by a reporter whether Trump would reimburse local governments, Spicer said: “The president just donated a significant amount of money of his salary back to the federal government. And so respectfully, it’s like — at what point does he do enough?”
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It’s difficult to estimate how much Trump’s regular trips to Mar-a-Lago have cost taxpayers.
A 2016 Government Accountability Office review of a four-day Obama trip to Illinois and Florida in 2013 found cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard totaled $3.6 million.
Officials in Palm Beach County, where Mar-a-Lago is located, have estimated the two-day summit with China's Xi could cost the county $280,000. County officials say they already have spent about $1.7 million in overtime and other expenses to assist the Secret Service.
The Government Accountability Office, at the request of several Democratic senators, recently announced it would undertake an inquiry into the security costs associated Trump’s frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago. The federal watchdog also will examine how classified information is handled at the resort.
Security concerns spiked in February after images emerged of Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appearing to confer about North Korea’s missile test in view of other diners on Mar-a-Lago’s open-air patio.
Several Democratic senators also have introduced "Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act” or the MAR-A-LAGO Act. It would mandate the release of visitor logs at the White House and other locations where the president conducts business.
