Obama Luxury Travel Costs Taxpayers, Weakens Secret Service
This week saw an astonishing report from the Washington Post that described how the Obama White House and other Obama officials lied and suppressed embarrassing information about the Secret Service and White House officials implicated in a prostitution scandal:
As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved.
But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member - yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.
For the Obama gang, election year politics took precedence over the truth and the safety of the president and the White House. This is no surprise to us, but you can see how the Secret Service is at the breaking point because of the abuses of this presidency.
We announced this week that our investigators obtained more records from the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing the security costs for the Obama Family's 2013 vacation in Honolulu and Martha's Vineyard, and the flight cost for the First Lady's 2014 ski trip to Aspen, CO, came to $972,450.24 in taxpayer-paid vacation expenses. The cost to taxpayers includes:
- Security for the Obamas' 2012-2013 Hawaii Christmas vacation cost taxpayers $566,093.09
- Security for the Obamas' 2013 vacation to Martha's Vineyard cost taxpayers $371,394.85
- Transportation for the First Lady's 2014 ski-trip in Aspen, CO cost taxpayers $34,962.30 (Judicial Watch is still awaiting security costs for the Aspen trip.)
In February 2014, Judicial Watch released flight expense records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that President Obama incurred $5,250,624 in flight expenses alone for his 2013 vacations to Hawaii and Martha's Vineyard. Adding in the newly released expense records, that brings total cost to the taxpayers for the two Obama family 2013 vacations and the First Lady' 2014 Aspen ski trip to $6,223,074.24, not including the Aspen security costs.
From December, 21, 2012, to January, 5, 2013, the Obama family spent their Christmas vacation in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they stayed at the luxurious 6,000 square-foot, $7.9 million Kailua home they had rented in 2011. From August 11 - 17, 2013, the Obama family spent an extended week vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where they stayed at the plush $7.6 million home of David Schulte, founder of the private equity firm Chilmark Partners and major contributor to Obama's campaigns. These two vacations cost a total of $937,487.94 in security alone.
The Obamas continually abuse the public trust and raid the taxpayers' coffers for unnecessarily luxurious and incessant vacations and travel. The very fact that we repeatedly have to file Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits to obtain this information reveals that the most transparent administration in history knows that its behavior is extravagant and, therefore, seeks to cover it up.
One can only imagine how this unnecessary travel, and the cover up of facts about its costs, saps the budget and morale of a Secret Service that cannot even secure the White House complex, and had trouble keeping the president secure even when he's traveling on important government business. I am told that morale in the Secret Service is terrible and that good men and women are fleeing the agency in droves.
According to the numbers we've been able to extract thus far, the Obamas and Bidens have spent more than $40 million taxpayer dollars on trips since 2009 up through the president's most recent Palm Springs and Key Largo golf outings, which cost the taxpayers $2,952,278 in flight expenses. Tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to send Obama golfing and his wife skiing: keep these numbers in mind as you hear the Obama gang distract from the corruption and abuse of the Secret Service with demands for more money and "reforms."
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