Wednesday, October 09, 2019

Unpaid bills pile up in Trump rallies’ wake


No surprise, This is Trump's habitual way.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/08/trump-rallies-unpaid-bills-039631

By ANITA KUMAR and QUINT FORGEY
10/08/2019 06:21 PM EDT

Donald Trump has raised record amounts of money as a presidential candidate. But he’s still left a slew of unpaid bills in his wake.

In city after city, across the nation, Trump has failed to pay local officials who provide thousands of dollars’ worth of security assistance to the president’s campaign during his Make America Great Again rallies.

In total, at least 10 cities have complained that the campaign has not reimbursed them for services provided by local police and fire departments, totaling more than $840,000, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity in June.

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It isn’t the first time Trump, a businessman with a global real estate empire, has faced accusations that he didn’t pay his bills. The complaints from local governments echo decades of accusations by private contractors who claim that Trump didn’t adequately compensate them for their work before he was sworn into office.

At least 60 lawsuits and more than 200 liens detailed allegations that Trump and his companies failed to pay various businesses and scores of employees for their work, according to an investigation by USA Today in 2016. Those who claimed they were stiffed by the future president included bartenders, painters, real estate brokers and others.

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“It is the U.S. Secret Service, not the campaign, which coordinates with local law enforcement,” Michael Glassner, the campaign’s chief operating officer, wrote in a statement. “The campaign itself does not contract with local governments for police involvement. All billing inquiries should always go to the Secret Service.”

But a Secret Service spokesman said the Secret Service does not pay for law enforcement overtime associated with protective visits. “The Secret Service is not funded to pay police overtime and we don’t have a mechanism to do so,” the spokesman said.

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Trump isn’t the only candidate to not pay the bills. In 2016, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders left bills for campaign events unpaid in dozens of cities, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

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