Trump owes money to media outlets and Secret Service — after not paying his bills: report
Former President Donald Trump might have a lot of cash in his campaign coffers but he's not paying his bills, recent Federal Election Commission reports reveal.
According to the campaign finance report, between July 1 and Sept. 30, Trump reported that he owed reimbursements to the New York Times, Daily Caller and ABC News. He also owes cash to the Secret Service.
The reason for the media bills is listed as a reimbursement for the press plane. Trump spends a lot of time trashing the media at his events, often pointing to them on the risers he sets up during each rally. But it turns out he's paying to ensure they're there.
As for the Secret Service, Trump owes them $330,401.62 in "air travel refunds," the FEC reports explain.
This isn't the first time Trump stiffed law enforcement. He has a long history of bamboozling his way out of paying police.
In 2021, Trump got into a fight with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over unpaid security from a 2019 rally. The $530,000 in security fees that the Trump campaign owed. Fray called them out and the campaign responded to it by threatening to sue him.
Trump's campaign said that his campaign is not liable for such costs and the U.S. Secret Service should foot the bill for the security, but that's not the way it works in a campaign.
The Secret Service protects the protectee, not the crowd. Federal taxpayer dollars are not allocated by Congress be spent to fund security at political events, even if Trump is a protectee. Many campaigns pay their security bills, likely fearful of the public relations fallout. That hasn't happened with Trump, however, who didn't pay security costs for years. It's still unclear who he has and hasn't paid since the 2016 election season.
By the Minneapolis battle, the Trump campaign owed over $2 million in unpaid security costs and overtime to the same officers they purport to uphold. It was reported by the Albuquerque Journal in Oct. 2021, that their city sent Trump an invoice for $211,175.94 for barricades and overtime for officers to be on hand for the event. At last check, that hadn't been paid along with the several other cities.
Lebanon, Ohio, Mesa, Arizona and Erie, Pennsylvania, are just a few other cities Trump bilked during his failed 2020 campaign. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Green Bay and Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Tucson, Arizona; Burlington, Vermont and Spokane, Washington — have also been left holding the bag, but that was from before he was elected to the president and during the 2016 campaign.
Ripon, Wisconsin Mayor Theodore Grant told Greenburg, PA not to expect Pence's rally with pro-Trump police to be worth the costs to the city. Ripon, which boasts itself as the "birthplace of the Republican Party," was forced to use its emergency fund to handle Pence's security costs from a July 17, 2020 event.
The $5,000-10,000 they had to come up with was two-thirds of the city's $15,000 emergency fund. The city didn't have any more funds available for any emergencies in the city.