President Trump’s inauguration committee raised $107 million for the famously packed 2017 event from private donors—at least twice as much as either President Obama or President Bush spent on any one of their inaugurations.
And boy, did they spend it. Much of it went to Trump properties and acquaintances, according to the New York Times, which saw financial reports of the spending and made details of it available to the public 0n Monday.
Here’s a few of the things Trump’s team spent their money on:
- $10,000 on makeup for 20 aides
- $1.5 million at Trump International Hotel in D.C.
- $30,000 in per diems to dozens of contract employees, “in addition to their fully covered hotel rooms, room service orders, plane tickets and taxi rides, including some to drop off laundry,” according to the Times
- $6.4 million in hotel room reservations for guests who ended up using other accommodations
- $2 million to Trump campaign official Brad Parscale’s firm for online advertisements
- $1.6 million in a fee to WIS Media Partners, a firm created for the inauguration and run by close friend of Donald Trump’s Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, which managed broadcast rights and worked on a documentary that never came to fruition
And on and on.
Trump’s, uh, generosity to acquaintances and his own companies has raised eyebrows.
“I have never heard anybody getting that kind of fee associated with any inaugural, ever,” Greg Jenkins, the executive director of George W. Bush’s second inaugural, told the Times in reaction to the WIS fee.
The inaugural committee has been under federal investigation for months, not for its expenditures (at least, not yet) but for how it kept track of donations. The committee should have documented every donation and reported it to the Federal Election Commission. Who wants to bet it didn’t?
Read the full list at the New York Times.