Ever since President Donald Trump first took office there have been incessant rumblings among his opponents about the Constitution’s emoluments clause and how they were certain that Trump was enriching himself by way of U.S. and foreign government expenditures at his many properties here and abroad.
Along those lines, it was revealed that the Democrat-controlled House Oversight Committee has launched an investigation into allegations that the U.S. military may have unnecessarily spent millions of taxpayer dollars at or in the vicinity of Trump’s Turnberry golf resort near Glasgow, Scotland.
Expenditures questioned
Politico reported that an Air National Guard C-17 transport jet based in Alaska made an unusual stop near the Turnberry resort during a supply mission to Kuwait earlier this year, a location not at all typical to the routes usually flown on such missions.
The jet landed and refueled at the nearby commerical Prestwick Airport — at greater expense than if it had refueled at a military base — and the five-man crew were lodged at the resort, far more extravagant and luxurious acommodations than the typical hotels or military lodgings at which a crew might stay.
Those allegations and others were included in a letter sent in June from the committee to then-acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, which informed him that investigation had been launched into potential conflicts of interest and emoluments violations, and also made a demand that a plethora of documentation be turned over to Congress.
Turnberry trouble
According to the letter, Trump purchased and renovated the struggling Turnberry property two years prior to his election as president, yet the resort has continued to encounter difficulties and also failed to turn a profit.
Likewise, the nearby Prestwick Airport was also operating at a loss, even after having been purchased by the Scottish government in 2013 — until it began to receive orders for jet fuel from the U.S. military in 2017 for a total of $11 million over the past two years.
Coinciding with the jet fuel orders at Prestwick was the offer of “cut-price rooms” for crew members and “free rounds of golf” at Turnberry for any military or civilian aircraft crew from the U.S.
The committee noted that President Trump has continued to maintain a financial stake in his empire of properties, and as such it felt compelled to look closer at all relevant documents to find any potential conflicts of interest or improper enrichment of Trump’s own business empire through the use of taxpayer dollars.
Media on alert
The story about potentially improper U.S. military expenditures at Trump-related properties in Scotland came on the heels of media outrage over Vice President Mike Pence’s recent decision to stay at a Trump-owned property in Ireland while on a trip to Europe. Pence noted that the already-secured Trump property was close to his family’s ancestral home, but the media still griped that it was too far away from scheduled events in Dublin and other locations in the United Kingdom.
Politico noted that requests for comment to the Pentagon, U.S. Air Force, and White House all went unanswered.
While it is entirely possible that the House committee’s investigation will determine that the C-17 air crew’s stop-over at the Trump property in Scotland was an improper expenditure, it is also just as likely that this is yet another molehill turned into a mountain that will prove to be largely meaningless once all of the facts of the matter are revealed and the liberal media spin is stripped away.
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