Family travels of former President Barack Obama’s family cost the U.S. a total of 114 million dollars during his presidency, while President Donald Trump has so far spent ten million dollars, documents obtained by Judicial Watch show. The conservative legal group got the documents from the U.S. Air Force and the Secret Service through a Freedom of Information Act request and two FOIA lawsuits. The documents show the costs revealed so far, but in future, more travel expenses made by Obama administration could be revealed, Newsweek reports.
Two family trips vacations during the weekend of February 14, 2014, cost the Secret Service 272,192 dollars. That’s when Michelle Obama and her daughters went to Aspen and shut its airport. The cost of their trip was 88,663.29 dollars. At the same time, former president Obama went to Palm Springs, where he met King Abdullah II of Jordan, and that cost 183,529.62 dollars.
Trump’s children and their families also went to Aspen this March and spent over 330,000 dollars, according to CBS reporting.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that Michelle Obama made two North Carolina trips last year to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Air Force expenses amounted to 40,902.40 dollars. According to the documents, in both trips, the former first lady took a C-40C military jet operating at 5,312 dollars per hour. Secret Service showed expenses for Obama’s post-presidency travels of 1,913,702.21 dollars.
But, Trump is on track to come out ahead of the expense record of Obama’s administration. For the celebration of his 100th day in office, Trump flew to a rally in Pennsylvania and spent 156,618 dollars and only a few days later he went to his golf club in New Jersey, a trip which came out to 224,765.89 dollars. He also spent over 1.1 million dollars visiting the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“It shouldn’t require federal lawsuits to…prod the Secret Service and Air Force to produce information about the costs of presidential travel—whether the travel is necessary or not, it’s a massive amount of money. We will continue to monitor this spending while taxpayers continue to pay the bills for presidential travel,” the president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said.
The organization sued because the Air Force and Secret Service did not respond to its public records requests in time, as required by law.
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