Trump Relocates Functioning Federal Government To Mar-a-Lago, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Affairs Of State Were Being Conducted In Buildings He Does Not Own

The Filing

PALM BEACH, Fla. President Donald J. Trump moved decisively this weekend to address a long-running structural deficiency in the American system of government, relocating the functioning operations of the federal executive branch to Mar-a-Lago, a private club he owns and from which he personally collects revenue. The transfer, which White House officials described as a routine weekend, resolved a concern that had quietly troubled the President since his first term: that the daily business of running the United States was being conducted inside federal buildings, structures the President neither owns nor profits from.

"A lot of people are saying it's the most beautiful seat of government anywhere, and they're right," said Trump, speaking from the patio of the Palm Beach estate, where the club's initiation fee had recently doubled to $1 million in what members described as an unrelated development. "We have the meetings here, we have the leaders come here, we do the calls here. Why would you do it in some old building in Washington when you could do it here, where it's warm, and where every single person walking past has paid me to be standing there."

According to sources within the administration, the President spent the first seven of his first nine weekends in office governing from the club, an arrangement that required the incoming national security adviser to physically fly to Florida and establish a system for tracking the volume of phone calls arriving from foreign heads of state. Officials noted that this was not a disruption of normal operations but had, in fact, become normal operations.

The relocation built on a foundation laid during the President's first term, when Trump visited Trump-owned properties on 274 separate days and special interests, lobbyists, and foreign governments held more than 250 events at his venues, each gathering offering attendees the chance to spend money in a building owned by the man they wished to influence. Administration officials characterized the second-term arrangement as merely the mature version of that model, in which the influence-purchasing and the governing now occur in the same room.

Ethics specialists noted that the practice raised a number of constitutional questions, chiefly the one located in the Emoluments Clause, but added that the President had resolved those questions by declining to read them.

At press time, the United States Secret Service had booked a block of rooms at the President's club at the going commercial rate, transferring taxpayer funds directly to the President so that it could continue protecting the President from threats that did not include the President.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who converted the official functions of the United States government into recurring paid foot traffic for a business he owns.
§The Mar-a-Lago Club, whose membership initiation fee doubled to $1 million in the months around his reelection, an upgrade marketed implicitly on proximity to a sitting President.
§The Trump Organization's golf clubs and resorts, in Florida and New Jersey, which absorbed a steady stream of presidential visits, federal lodging payments, and Secret Service bookings billed at market rates.
§Dues-paying Mar-a-Lago members, who purchased, for $1 million, a casual standing relationship with the apparatus of the executive branch.
§Foreign governments and heads of state, who learned that an audience with the President could be arranged at a commercial venue, with the venue's fee credited to the President personally.
§Lobbyists and domestic special interests, who could now influence the federal government and patronize the President's business in a single transaction.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment