Taxpayers Paid $3K/Month In Potty Privileges For Ivanka Trump's Secret Service Detail. Here's Why

American taxpayers may know where at least some of the money they pay to the government goes, but they may not have been aware that they have been helping front an usual $3000/month bill for Secret Service agents to use a bathroom in the Washington D.C. neighborhood that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have been calling home.

The federal government has been footing such a bill for more than three years as it turns out, so that the Secret Service detail assigned to protect President Donald Trump’s daughter, son-in-law and three children could use a restroom while on duty. Space for them to use the facilities came in the form of a leased 820-square foot apartment on Tracy Place NW which started on Sept. 27, 2017, and expires on Sept. 26, 2021—which will equal a total of $144,000.

As for why the agents needed to use such a pricey solution when they had to use the bathroom? According to the Washington Post, they had been barred from using the 6.5 baths inside Trump and Kushner’s home, something that the couple reportedly instituted as a rule when they moved into the property in the elite Kalorama neighborhood.

Prior to the apartment rental, agents were instructed to use a porta-potty that had been erected on the sidewalk, though it was removed after complaints from neighbors. Following that, agents traveled to the nearby home of former President Barack Obama, where agents assigned to his protective detail had their own facilities in a garage the family didn’t use. The agents were later barred from there as well after one member left what WaPo described as an “unpleasant mess,” and then resorted to either driving one mile away to Vice President Mike Pence’s home to use the facilities, or nearby restaurants and other businesses.

Naturally, the news of this expense, which, due to the Sundry Civil Expenses Act of 1907, is covered by taxpayer money, was not well-received on social media.

Some also felt that the story was something out of the 2011 film “The Help,” and questioned other ways the family likely treated their detail.

This particular expense isn’t the only way the family has run up Secret Service costs during the time President Trump has been in office. The money spent at Trump family-owned properties by the agency has often been reported on as being very high, including $471,000 over 103 payments from January 2017-April 2018. Among the rates that were charged to Secret Service detail members who traveled with the President to Mar-A-Lago in Florida were multiple charges of $650 per night, as well as a $17,000/month fee for use of a three-bedroom cottage at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Taxpayers also foot a $33,000 bill by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin after he spent 137 days at a Trump hotel in 2017.