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There’s quite a bit of taxpayer money that went to the Secret Service to protect not just the president, but a bunch of other people as well.

David Fahrenthold: Trump Tower is ‘not doing very well’

Washington Post that when a president leaves office, the Secret Service protects him and his spouse for life.

“But if he has adult kids, if there are White House aides, once the president’s out of office, they’re on their own,” Fahrenthold said.

“[Former President Donald] Trump did something that no president had done before,” he added. “He extended six months of Secret Service protection for free to his adult children, of which there are four, and three top White House officials. He never explained why, there was no public decision, no public order. He just did it. And so what that meant was the taxpayers spent about $1.7 million over the first six months to protect a bunch of millionaires.”

These are people, Fahrenthold says, who are going on business trips, weekend vacations, ski trips, and “living a very high-style life with free taxpayer protection.”

That said, “$1.7 million, sadly, in the world of the government is not that much money,” Fahrenthold noted. “The interesting thing about this, I think, is just that it was so unexpected. So they had to send agents and spend money on people that normally are never protected, and could honestly pay for their own protection.”

Listen to the full interview with David Fahrenthold at the audio player above or .

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