In the News

Today, all Democratic Members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent letters to all Cabinet Secretaries and other federal agency heads requesting documents about how their Departments are spending federal taxpayer funds on products or services provided by businesses owned by or affiliated with the Trump Organization.

“The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent, including the amount of federal funds that are being provided to private businesses owned by the President and the purposes of these expenditures,” the Members wrote. “The President’s financial entanglements make it impossible to know whether he is making his decisions in the public interest or to benefit to him or his family members financially. The President’s continued ownership of private businesses also places federal employees in compromised positions when they work on official activities that potentially create financial benefits for the President or his family members.”

There have been numerous press reports of federal funds potentially flowing to Trump-affiliated businesses, including:

• President Trump is receiving federal housing assistance payments as a result of his 4% ownership interest in Starrett City Associates, L.P., the nation’s largest federally subsidized residential property. Starrett City’s owners have reportedly received “more than $490 million in rent subsidies since May 2013.”

• The Department of State reportedly “spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new Trump hotel in Vancouver when members of President Trump’s family headlined the grand opening of the tower in late February.”

• The State Department reportedly spent “$9,510 for hotel rooms to assist the Secret Service” in conjunction with “Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay in early January to promote a Trump hotel and condominium tower.”

• By April 2017, President Trump reportedly had made seven trips totaling 25 days to his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, with each trip potentially incurring as much as $3 million in federal costs.

Although President Trump has claimed that staying at his property in New Jersey, the Trump National Golf Club-Bedminster, “saves country money” and that “staying in NYC is much more expensive,” the Trump Administration has not disclosed the total amount of federal expenditures associated with his trips to Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster—or any properties he owns—and it has not disclosed whether expenditures by the federal government were paid to the President’s properties or whether the President benefited financially from these expenditures.

In today’s letters, the Members requested documents from each department by August 25, 2017, in order to identify the total amount of taxpayer funds being expended by the U.S. government to businesses owned by or affiliated with President Trump.

Click the links below to read each letter:
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Defense
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Department of Homeland Security
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of the Interior
• Department of Justice
• Department of Labor
• Department of State
• Department of Transportation
• Department of the Treasury
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Agency for International Development
• National Science Foundation
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Office of Personnel Management
• Small Business Administration
• Social Security Administration