Trump used the Secret Service to make money. Here’s how taxpayers can respond.

We always knew that Donald Trump sought to personally profit from the presidency, whether by receiving foreign government emoluments (aka payoffs) or scheduling a G-7 meeting at his own golf club. Recently, we learned more about the true extent of his grift – the exorbitant amounts he charged taxpayers for Secret Service agents to stay in his hotels and clubs. On paper, the agents’ job was to protect him and his family. In reality, they had a second job: to make taxpayers pay him a lot of money (our money) at the same time. But we the taxpayers are not without ways of stopping Trump’s scam.

While the government has long paid the costs for Secret Service agents to travel with and protect the president and the first family, only one president has made money renting rooms to his protection. On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released forms showing room rates more than five times what’s allowable for federal employees. Some of these bills were incurred right in Washington, where the president stayed at the White House, and could have overnight guests. When his sons Don Jr. and Eric visited him, they chose not to stay at the White House but at a hotel – the Trump Hotel, of course.

Taxpayers were charged $1,160 per room per night at the Trump International Hotel in Washington for Secret Service agents protecting Eric Trump on March 8, 2017, a night for which the government rate was $242. Taxpayers were charged $1,185 per room per night for agents protecting Donald Trump Jr. on Nov. 8, 2017 at the Trump Hotel, at a time when the government rate was $201. For most presidential offspring of presidents, being guarded by Secret Service agents would be enough of a thrill. For the Trump family, making money at taxpayer expense was apparently an even greater thrill.

Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., recently wrote a letter to the Secret Service demanding more information about these stays. Her letter explained that Trump visited his properties more than 500 times while in office, and noted that early in his term, “the Secret Service received authorization for additional flexibility for expenses during protective missions, including per diem expenses above the government rate.” Yes, $1,000 a night hotel rooms need a lot of “flexibility.”

“Records show the Secret Service spent more than $1.4 million on lodging at Trump-owned properties in the United States from Jan. 20, 2017, through Sept. 15, 2021,” Maloney concluded. That’s a lot of money – our money.

There are multiple avenues for recapturing Trump’s profiteering at the expense of the federal government – or at least preventing it in the future. First, his actions were a violation of the domestic emoluments clause of the Constitution, which provides that the president cannot receive compensation from the states or from the federal government in excess of his salary and pension set by Congress.

As with the foreign emoluments…