Blue Country Gazette: September 2021

Thursday, September 30, 2021

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, your privilege is showing

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 22: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) departs from a closed door meeting on infrastructure between White House officials and a bipartisan group of Senators on June 22, 2021 in Washington, DC. Following the meeting, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki shared an update saying that progress was made between the two groups, but that more work was still needed. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Sen. Sinema,

Just a short note:

Republicans won’t break with Trump because they fear the consequences from their base. Your attitude tells me that you have decided your voter base really isn’t Democratic voters. Or they’re Democratic voters who break from the norm. You’re wrong.

You have decided that you will go your own way, and damned be the consequences. Not just for others elected, but for the country as a whole.

Your decision impacts people you don’t consider.

You and Sen. Joe Manchin fret about the climate change portions of the bills at hand, but climate change is killing Americans—not in the future, but right now. Disabled Americans worry about power outages, the loss of gas and electricity to keep medications properly refrigerated, and equipment they need to live running.

That’s okay. You want to stall. I gotcha.

You’ve decided meeting with the president is cool. I understand, meeting with the president is nice, and frequently it’s a real thrill.

Sinema's style is to go directly to members or committee chairmen she needs to talk to, a habit that is reflected in the number of times she has met directly one-on-one with the President.

When pushed on criticism by fellow members that Sinema isn't more forthcoming about her positions, Sinema's team pointed CNN to the more than 10 formal meetings the Arizona senator has had with the White House. Those don't include informal contacts, texts or other shorter exchanges that have become part of Sinema's daily operation.

It’s a privilege not many have. I’m sure it was a good time, senator.

You decided that the president isn’t enough, though. You’ve had time to meet with lobbyists opposed to the legislation and have a nice dinner with them. Good for you.

Privilege is nice, Kyrsten. Money, resources, attention. You’re Lucy holding the football, and that’s fun. There’s a problem with your idea, though. Republicans do not vote in a Democratic primary. If you have not already assured yourself of a primary opponent, you are on the fast track to do so.

Please, Sinema, tell me: What exactly in the bill do you want to cut? Give specific examples of what in the legislation you think can be cut or reduced. I’m waiting. A 65% unfavorable rating in your own state from your own party base tells me your future as a commentator or book writer is going nowhere.

P.S. If you’re thinking about running independently in Arizona, good luck. I’ve seen that show twice before. Privilege is nice. But getting a good job, having access to good roads, stable service, and the promise of an American future? That isn’t a privilege reserved just for you, senator. I hope you can understand that.

You’re Lucy holding the football, and that’s fun. For you, anyway. For those who put you in office that you are now betraying, not so much.

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

One week after details of Trump's plan to overthrow America were revealed, the press is silent

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 17: (L-R) White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, Senior Advisor to the President for Policy Stephen Miller, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and Councelor to the President Kellyanne Conway in the East Room of the White House ahead of a joint news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel March 17, 2017 in Washington, DC. The two political leaders discussed strengthening NATO, fighting the Islamic State group, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and held a roundtable discussion with German business leaders during their first face-to-face meeting. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

One week ago, a memo was revealed showing a detailed scheme, prepared at the White House and discussed in the Oval Office, by which the former sitting executive proposed to overturn the results of the election and remain in office indefinitely. That plan wasn’t an argument about the needs of the nation in the midst of some emergency. It didn’t even claim that there was actual fraud in the election. It was simply the step-by-step means by which the electoral votes of multiple states would not be acknowledged.

Those in control of the United States of America made a plan to end the United States of America. To end the whole concept of a representative democracy. To destroy the republic.

Had the effort to fundamentally end the nation been limited to a memo circulating through the highest levels in government, it still would have represented the largest threat to the nation since the Civil War—easily greater than the threat posed by any foreign enemy. But it wasn’t just a memo. Attorney John Eastman’s plan was built on pieces that the GOP had already been putting into place to transform America from a democracy to authoritarian dictatorship.

For example, on Dec. 14, Republicans in Georgia told the media that they were having a closed-door meeting with educators about the ongoing pandemic. They were not. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time, they were actually meeting to elect a “shadow slate of electors” who were put in place expressly “to preserve Trump’s legal challenges.”

It wasn’t just Eastman. It wasn’t just the Oval Office. The memo was just one clear description of a scheme that went on across the country to bring down the American government. And one week later, the media is completely ignoring the biggest story in the nation’s history.

What do we know of Trump’s efforts to sever the line of elections that goes back to the nation’s founding?

John Eastman

Eastman’s memo lays out a six-step process in which Mike Pence acknowledges the slate of alternative electors handily provided by Georgia Republicans as a pretext for refusing to total that’s state’s votes. Pence would then simply repeat this process across a number of states until he reached the point where Trump had won a majority of the states he would agree to count. At that point, Pence would declare Trump the winner. Should anyone object—a fairly safe bet—Pence would toss the question to the House, where Republicans control a bare margin of delegations, and each state gets only one vote. And should that draw objections, the whole thing would be bundled up for the Trump-packed Supreme Court.

On every legal point, Eastman is simply wrong. In every iteration of this plan, it doesn’t matter. All that had to happen to crumple the nation was for Pence to say the words.

Jeffrey Clark

To smooth the path to destruction, Trump worked directly with attorney Jeffrey Clark on a plan to remove acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, replace him with Clark, and then used the full weight of the Department of Justice to support efforts to halt the electoral count and recognize Georgia’s “shadow slate” as its official delegation. Clark intended to put an official Department of Justice stamp on all the claims about voter fraud being made by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

Again, there was actual no legal or factual basis behind Clark’s claims. It would not have mattered. The point was to throw away the last pretense that the Department of Justice was anything but a part of Trump’s effort to remain in power. Clark was positioning himself as the Martial Herman or Pyotr Krasikov of the Trumpist regime.

The only thing that prevented Clark’s scheme from moving forward—the only thing—was the coincidental release of the recording of Trump’s threats to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Had that recording not appeared exactly when it did, there is little doubt Clark’s scheme would have moved forward.

Steve Bannon

Bannon spelled out from the beginning how Trump could pitch the nation into turmoil using the official recording of electoral votes on Jan. 6 as a gateway to chaos. Like Eastman, Bannon didn’t even pretend that there was some kind of truth behind the claims of election fraud, or that what they were attempting had a legal basis. Bannon simply explained that the goal was to “cast enough of a shadow over Biden’s victory” that it destroyed any remaining faith in the election system.

"People are going to go, 'What the f**k is going on here?'" said Bannon. "We're going to bury Biden on January 6th, f**king bury him."

Rudy Giuliani

All of this, everything Eastman, Clark, and Bannon were doing, was held up by the anger and distrust being generated through a deliberate, well-funded, ongoing effort conducted by Trump’s campaign legal teams under Giuliani. The effort to delegitimize the election system and sow the seeds of violence began before the election, with Trump saying, “The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged” repeatedly, beginning in August of 2020.

And, just like Bannon, just like Eastman, just like Clark, Giuliani knew that everything he was pushing was a lie. He did not care. Because delivering the truth, or preserving democracy, was never the goal.

The violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6 wasn’t the culmination of Trump’s efforts; it was the tip of an insurrection iceberg. The overthrow of American democracy was plotted and planned, in the White House, in conservative think tanks, in Trump’s campaign offices, and in state Republican parties. Not only did it represent the greatest threat to the nation since at least the Civil War, that threat remains intact.

This is the biggest story, bar none, in the history of the nation. A story against which Watergate would barely warrant a footnote and Iran Contra would be lost in the details. So why is that story not on the front page of The New York Times, or The Washington Post? Why isn’t it at the top of CNN or NBC News?

The only real question that remains is not what Donald Trump set out to do, but why the media was such a failure in its job to sound the warning. And why it’s failing again.

"Giuliani knew that everything he was pushing was a lie. He did not care. Because delivering the truth, or preserving democracy, was never the goal." What will it take America to see through these scumbags?

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Moscow Mitch McConnell's hijacking of the Supreme Court is backfiring most bigly

(From L) US Supreme Court justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh attend President Joe Bidens inauguration as the 46th President of the United States on the West Front of the US Capitol in Washington, DC on January 20, 2021. - Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the US. (Photo by JONATHAN ERNST / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) — The masked banditos of the U.S. Supreme Court (minus Elena Kagan, who just happened to be caught standing in the wrong place), justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, attend President Joe Biden's inauguration as the 46th president of the United States. The trio are charged with stealing a woman's right to her own body - in the dead of night.

On second thought, maybe it wasn't the best idea to overturn a 50-year-old Supreme Court precedent on abortion in the dead of night via an unsigned opinion.

After a fourth poll in the span of a couple weeks found the Supreme Court's job approval plummeting, it's becoming crystal clear that the nation's high court is suffering from a supreme loss of confidence among the American people. Gallup, which has been tracking the court’s approval rating since 2000, found public approval of the Supreme Court took a precipitous tumble from 58% approval in 2020 to a 20-year low of 40% now.

The decision by the court's conservative majority to let a Texas abortion ban abruptly go into effect earlier this month resulted in chaos in the nation's second-largest state along with neighboring states as they absorb an influx of women seeking abortion care. But it also appears to have marked an inflection point for a court that now carries the stench of Sen. Mitch McConnell's politicization.

And everyone knows it. Over the last several weeks, three justices have pleaded their case publicly that the court isn't packed with a bunch of conservative political hacks but rather a group of people following their judicial philosophies. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett along with liberal justice Stephen Breyer have all given that ridiculous defense of a court that was highjacked by McConnell and his Senate Republicans after they stole two seats in a row that should have been appointed by Democratic presidents.

The court's partisan leanings were on full display in August and September as the justices torpedoed President's Joe Biden's pandemic-related eviction moratorium, forced the reinstatement of the Trump-era "remain in Mexico" policy for asylum seekers, and took a hatchet to Roe v. Wade.

“Whatever people might have seen as moderation on the court over the past year was followed by these three rulings, right in a row and close together, that all took a conservative tilt,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll, told The Washington Post. The Marquette survey also found the court's approval rating plunging in recent polling.

As Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute, told the Post, “It is all well and good for justices to tell the public that their decisions reflect their judicial philosophies, not their political affiliations ... If the right side’s judicial philosophies always produce results favored by Republicans and the left side’s judicial philosophies always produce results favored by Democrats, there is little chance of persuading the public there is a difference between the two.”

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut agreed.

“I think these last few years have really been very dangerous and potentially devastating to the Supreme Court’s credibility because the public is seeing the court as increasingly political, and the public is right,” said Blumenthal, who served as a Supreme Court clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun. “The statements by Thomas, Barrett, Breyer, you know, give me a break ... they are just inherently noncredible.”

Now we know why they call him Moscow Mitch: he's relentlessly destroying America's most sacred institutions one at a time.

Monday, September 27, 2021

Mob rule is overtaking America, driven by the collapse of the Republican Party

In a profoundly detached fit of magical thinking, GOP leader Mitch McConnell told journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa that the Trump era was on the wane.

In their recently released book Peril, McConnell is quoted as saying there was "a clear trend moving" away from Trump and he was "a fading brand."

McConnell, who is hailed by many Beltway journalists as a master strategist, had obviously created his own alternative reality because he prefers it to the one in which Trumpism is crushing his fanciful delusions about the present state of the Republican Party—and his place in it.

In fact, Trump and, more specifically, Trumpism, are reshaping everything from the policies Republicans champion to the candidates who will prevail in GOP primaries to the lawmakers who will fill GOP seats. The Republican Party is enduring a full Trump makeover inside and out, and anyone who doesn't see it is living in fantasy land.

Far from “fading,” Trump's influence is metastasizing. When it comes to party leadership, Trump's list of endorsees has grown to roughly 40, giving everyone he blesses a leg up in their primary. At the same time, he continues to force GOP lawmakers into retirement—particularly those with any sense of integrity, dignity, or independent thinking skills.

Trump's personal derangement is also transferring to the masses. The delusion that the 2020 election was stolen from him—one dismissed internally by his own campaign—continues to get traction. On the same week that Arizona's 2020 sham audit managed to find exactly zero fraud, the number of fraudits being entertained nationwide grew to four as Texas added its name to the list of ignominy. These fraudits have no authority to overturn results and no credibility among anyone outside of 2020 truther circles. But among a sizable portion of the GOP electorate, they keep some dim hope alive that the election could be overturned, Trump could be reinstated, and perhaps most importantly, that they as voters were egregiously wronged. Because it's not really about Trump anymore—it's about the rage and the permission structure that Trumpism has created for it.

While Trump may be channeling his acolytes’ anger to achieve his own ends, he is no longer the master of it. Trumper rage has infected nearly aspect of American public life, and it can just as easily turn on its perpetrators as it can on the rest of us. Trump told an Alabama rally last month, "I believe totally in your freedoms. I do. ... But I recommend take the vaccines. I did it. It's good. Take the vaccines." Instead of cheering for their supposed hero, the mostly maskless crowd fell mostly silent except for a chorus of boos that rang out from the throng.

Why? Because Trump's just the vehicle for their anger, and if he's not saying what they want to hear, screw him.

As Costa told MSNBC this week, in their more candid off-the-record moments, Republican lawmakers will tell you they're not in control any longer.

"It's the voters now in the Republican Party that are in control," Costa told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace in a two-hour special on the collapse of the Republican Party. "It's the voters and the crowds that are driving this."

The GOP rage machine is off the rails, and it's proving even more harmful at the local level. "We know where you live" has become its favorite refrain. A QAnon activist in Iowa used that threat this week, as a preamble to more intimidation and bullying at a local school board meeting.

"We’re going to stalk you! We’re coming to your house!” he continued, brandishing a little wand like a sword.

In Kent County, Michigan, health department director Dr. Adam London recently pleaded for help in a letter to the county board of commissioners.

“I need help. My team and I are broken. I’m about done," he wrote in a letter dated August 22. "I’ve given just about everything to Kent County, and now I’ve given some more of my safety." London, who issued a mask mandate for local schools, had recently been run off the road by an angry driver—not once, but twice—traveling at more than 70 miles per hour.

If America was ever a nation of laws, it's not anymore. Slowly but surely, a system of mob rule and vigilante justice is sweeping the country. While the Jan. 6 Capitol siege surely empowered this celebration of lawlessness, its most dangerous seeds are being sown across the country at the local level during city council, school board, and health department proceedings that used to be sleepy, mundane affairs.

And while Trump has regularly stoked violence at his rallies and on Jan. 6 encouraged supposed patriots to "fight like hell" for the country, the GOP's supposed leaders—Trump and McConnell included—are no longer in charge of the the monster they fed and created. They're just holding on for dear life, hoping the monster doesn't turn on them.

They've created a monster and the GOP is desperately hanging onto its tail.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Clarence (Coke Can) Thomas, the "I Like Beer" Guy, and Miss Prissy Barrett Are Coming for Your Uterus

Clarence Thomas and His Friends Are Coming for Your Uterus

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (photo: Erin Schaff/AP)

Molly Jong-Fast / The Daily Beast

23 September 21

readersupportednews.org

Amy Coney Barrett is singing from the same hymn sheet as they get ready to dismantle what’s left of Roe. Don’t be fooled.

There’s a reason that the partisan hacks of the Supreme Court keep protesting about how they’re not partisan hacks.

A year after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, they’re racing to overturn Roe v. Wade, while pretending they’re not and speaking out against the partisan hackery they’re engaged in.

It’s an ironic turn of events, if a sadly unsurprising one, as first Amy Coney Barrett and now Clarence Thomas delivered speeches asking Americans to trust them—speeches that just happened to come before the Supreme Court’s next session when they’ve agreed to hear the Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that’s teed up for the high court’s Trumpy new majority to end abortion as we’ve known it.

They’re coming for your uterus, and that’s not hyperbole. The central tenet of Roe is viability, that “a person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception.”

Since 1973, American women have had the right to end a pregnancy before viability. Now, the Supreme Court has allowed that right to be subverted in the state of Texas. Women there are already driving hundreds of miles to Colorado and New Mexico to get abortions. Three out of four abortion clinics in San Antonio are no longer performing the procedure.

Now the justices who used the shadow docket to let that happen are begging to be themselves judged on their shtick and not on their actions. On Thursday, speaking at a Catholic university, Thomas said that “when we begin to venture into the legislative or executive branch lanes, those of us, particularly in the federal judiciary with lifetime appointments, are asking for trouble.”

You'll remember Thomas as someone who said in 1992 that Roe v. Wade was “plainly wrong.” In 2020, Thomas upped that to “grievously wrong for many reasons, but the most fundamental is that its core holding—that the Constitution protects a woman's right to abort her unborn child—finds no support in the text of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

In his speech this week, Thomas also warned that “we have lost the capacity” as leaders “to not allow others to manipulate our institutions when we don't get the outcomes that we like.” Hmmm, didn’t his wife Ginni try to “manipulate our institutions” when she didn’t get the outcome she liked? She was a big Jan. 6 cheerleader, telling a group of election-denying insurrectionists on Facebook that “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING.” Two days later, she added “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol]” and a few days after that she ended up having to write to her husband’s former clerks that “I owe you all an apology. I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions.”

I guess her “lifetime passion” is overturning elections?

As to venturing into the executive branch’s lane, that didn’t seem to be an issue for the Thomases during the Trump administration when, according to Slate, “Trump has rewarded Thomas with an extraordinary amount of access to the Oval Office. Her advocacy group Groundswell got an audience with the president in early 2019. According to the New York Times, the meeting was arranged after Clarence and Ginni Thomas had dinner with the Trumps.”

Clarence Thomas’ speech about court overreach came a week after Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a group at the University of Louisville, “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” since “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.” She was introduced at the McConnell Center by her patron and the center's namesake, Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who some might say is the very definition of a partisan hack.

I understand the temptation of these justices to lie to the American public. They want to have it both ways, to serve the Republican agenda and overturn Roe while also maintaining what’s left of the court’s reputation for transcending ideology.

But, unfortunately for Thomas and Barrett, most of us will judge them on their actions and not ridiculous speeches about them. I expect that as the Republican agenda gets ever more batshit, these Trumpy justices will give more speeches pleading with people not to see them as the partisan hacks that they are.

The American people are not morons, and while these justices may abuse their power to decide the law, they can’t spit on us and make us believe that it’s raining.

"A year after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, they’re racing to overturn Roe v. Wade, while pretending they’re not..."

Cartoon: Vaccine mandates

Saturday, September 25, 2021

It Shouldn't Be This Easy to End the Republic

CNN got hold of a Trump lawyer's memo that describes a precise six-point plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. (photo: J. Scott Appleshite/Getty)

Charles Pierce / Esquire

24 September 21

readersupportednews.org

CNN got hold of a Trump lawyer's memo that describes a precise six-point plan for then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Anyone who read the novel Seven Days In May, or anyone who’s watched the superb movie, knows the main reason that the military coup driving the plot failed is that it got so tangled in its own complexities—codes involving horse races, secret flights of military transports, hijacking the president to a national security bunker, depending vitally upon a wishy-washy admiral in Europe—that the president and his allies finally were able to gum up the works and save the republic. The hero of the piece, Marine Colonel “Jiggs” Casey, even cites the complexity of the government as a sign that the coup plotters will fail.

What a complicated thing this government is, he thought. There sits the man with the codes that could launch a nuclear war and the Secretary of the Treasury doesn’t even know it.

The point is that it shouldn’t be this easy. CNN got hold of a memo from a lawyer in the employ of the last administration named John Eastman, which Eastman sent to then-Vice President Mike Pence, that described a precise six-point plan by which Pence could overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Eastman’s plan has an evil logic to it that cuts through any institutional safeguards in place through the simple expedient of believing that Pence was both a team player and a coward.

2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

Ultimately, the whole plan is summarized by Point No. 6, which is fairly summarized as, “We’re lawless. So fcking what?”

The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

Is there any doubt that this would have worked, at least temporarily, with the mob also howling outside the Senate chamber? At the very least, it would have thrown the government into utter chaos and prompted a constitutional crisis unlike anything we’d seen since 1861. Is there any doubt that the great mass of people in this country would have seen it as just Both Sides Arguing and gone back to sleep? (I believe there would have been fighting in the streets, which would then be cast as more evidence of our Sadly Divided Nation.) And before we all start blessing the name of Michael Richard Pence, we should remember that he actually agonized over what to do, going so far as to consult with Dan Quayle, who had to remind Pence what Pence’s duty to the republic actually was. We now have the game plan, in writing. It shouldn’t be this easy—and this, I promise you, was just a scrimmage. The real ball game still awaits.

It's a good thing these guys were stupid. We won't be so lucky next time.

Friday, September 24, 2021

Trump Gave Six Months Extra Secret Service Protection to His Kids, Three Officials. It Cost Taxpayers $1.7 Million.

Donald Trump Jr. (left) and Eric Trump. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty)

24 September 21

David A. Fahrenthold and Carol D. Leonnig / The Washington Post

readersupportednews.org

In June, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited Israel to scout investments for his new company, then flew to Qatar for a conference. At the time, Mnuchin had been out of office for five months.

But, because of an order given by President Donald Trump, he was still entitled to protection by Secret Service agents. As agents followed Mnuchin across the Middle East, the U.S. government paid up to $3,000 each for their plane tickets, and $11,000 for rooms at Qatar’s luxe St. Regis Doha, according to government spending records.

In all, the records show U.S. taxpayers spent more than $52,000 to guard a multimillionaire on a business trip.

These payments were among $1.7 million in additional government spending triggered by Trump’s highly unusual order — which awarded six extra months of Secret Service protection for his four adult children and three top administration officials — according to a Washington Post analysis of new spending documents.

That $1.7 million in extra spending is still tiny in comparison to the Secret Service’s $2.4 billion budget.

But, as the records show, Trump’s order required the Secret Service to devote agents and money to an unexpected set of people: wealthy adults, with no role in government, whom the agents trailed to ski vacations, weekend houses, a resort in Cabo San Lucas, and business trips abroad.

“Who wouldn’t enjoy continuing their free limo service and easy access to restaurant tables?” said Jim Helminski, a former Secret Service executive, who said the decision appeared to show Trump giving a public service as a private benefit to his inner circle. “Even if there was a credible risk to family and associates of Trump, these people are now private citizens who can afford to hire some very talented private security firms for their personal protection.”

The Secret Service declined to comment, beyond a statement that it “balances operational security requirements with judicious allocation of resources.”

Trump’s post-presidential office did not respond to questions. The Post sent messages to all seven of the people who received the additional protection. Five, including all of Trump’s adult children, did not respond. Another, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, declined to comment.

The seventh, Mnuchin, said through a spokesman that he had not asked Trump to provide the extra protection. After it was given, Mnuchin — like all the others — could have declined Secret Service protection.

But he did not, “because government officials advised him to maintain it,” said Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for Mnuchin. O’Malley declined to provide further details.

O’Malley also said that Mnuchin had told the Secret Service “that he intends to reimburse certain expenses” that resulted from his extra protection. But he declined to say when Mnuchin would do so, or how much of the expenses he would repay.

By law, the Secret Service is supposed to protect ex-presidents and their spouses for life, and their children until they turn 16. In recent years, former presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush have also ordered agents to protect slightly older, college-aged children for a short time after leaving office.

Trump went far beyond that.

He extended six months of extra protection to his children Trump Jr., 43; Ivanka, 39; Eric, 37; Tiffany, 27; and their spouses — as well as to Mnuchin, Meadows and former national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.

Trump did not publish any public order announcing the decision at the time, or explaining his rationale.

To estimate the cost of Trump’s decision, The Post requested Secret Service records detailing the cost of protecting all seven people. For five of them, The Post received records covering the full six months, showing the costs of buying airplane tickets, renting cars and booking hotel rooms for agents on protective duty. For the other two — Tiffany Trump and O’Brien — The Post examined records covering the first four months, which had previously been obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The records began on Jan. 20, in the first hours after Trump left office.

Among the first payments the Secret Service made was to Trump’s own company.

That day, the records showed, Ivanka Trump and her family left Washington for Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — where Ivanka Trump has a cottage on the grounds. Secret Service agents came along, and Trump’s club charged them for the rooms they used.

The bill was $708.30 for one night, the records showed. The rate appeared to be $141.66 per room, the same rate that the club charged the Secret Service while Trump was still president.

In the next six months, the Secret Service spent about $347,000 on airfare, hotels and rental cars while protecting Ivanka Trump and her husband, former White House adviser Jared Kushner, the records show. The receipts showed the pair visiting resort destinations: Hawaii, Utah ski country, an upscale Wyoming ranch and Kiawah Island, S.C.

Agents also followed Kushner — now a private businessman — to the United Arab Emirates in May, paying $9,000 for hotel rooms, according to federal spending data posted online. The Secret Service did not say what the airfare costs were for this Kushner trip. The Daily Beast reported that the hotel was the Ritz Carlton in Abu Dhabi, citing a government spending document that said the hotel was Kushner’s choice.

Spokespeople for Ivanka Trump and Kushner did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Ivanka Trump’s adult siblings were, according to the records, less expensive to protect. Tiffany Trump, a recently married law school graduate, appeared to cost the least to guard. The partial records showed that, as of May, the Secret Service had spent $56,000 on airfare, rental cars and hotels while protecting her.

The costs of protecting Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were similar: $241,000 for Eric and $213,000 for Trump Jr.

The records showed that the brothers mainly shuttled between their homes in New York and South Florida, with an occasional side trip. Trump Jr. went fishing in Montana. Eric Trump — who has become the most visible leader of the Trump Organization — visited Trump hotels in Washington and Chicago.

When he did, just as when his sister visited the Bedminster club, the Trump Organization charged agents who stayed in the former president’s properties: $350 for rooms in Washington, $1,415 in Chicago.

Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said these charges — though small — represented a moral choice for the Trump family. If they wanted to reduce the burden of their extended protection on taxpayers, here was an easy chance to do it. Just don’t bill for rooms at Trump properties.

“The patriotic thing would obviously be not charging the government to stay at your properties and not profiting or profiteering off the government. It is just so easy for them to write off the rooms,” Libowitz said. “And we’re not seeing that.”

In that way, Trump’s children were following an example set by their father. Since he left office, he has lived full-time at his own properties — and charged the Secret Service for rooms every night. The total bill is now more than $72,000. It is almost certain to grow: Trump, unlike his children, has protection for life.

In examining expenses among the three White House officials who received an six extra months of protection, The Post could find little data on the cost of guarding O’Brien, the former national security adviser. The Secret Service spent $17,000 on rental cars while guarding him, but other expenses were not released.

Meadows, the former chief of staff, accounted for $342,000 in protection costs, the records showed. The Secret Service released few details, beyond a list of car rentals that showed visits to Washington, Florida and Meadows’s home state of North Carolina.

The most expensive of the seven to protect, it appears, was Mnuchin — an investment banker and Hollywood producer who served all four years of Trump’s term. In all, the Secret Service reported spending $479,000 while protecting him.

The receipts showed that agents spent $114,000 over the six months to rent rooms at a W Hotel in Los Angeles, where Mnuchin has a home.

They also followed Mnuchin on three trips to the Middle East, where Mnuchin is reportedly seeking to raise money from sovereign wealth funds for a new venture called Liberty Strategic Capital.

On one of those visits, Mnuchin told the Jerusalem Post that he was hoping to capitalize on the Trump administration’s efforts to build ties between Israel and some majority-Muslim neighbors — which culminated with the “Abraham Accords,” normalizing relations between Israel, the UAE and several other nations.

“Given our relationships here, the opportunity to bridge the economic transactions between different Abraham Accords member states is also a tremendous opportunity for us,” Mnuchin said in Tel Aviv in June. The Secret Service spent $23,000 on hotel rooms in Israel related to Mnuchin’s travel, records show.

Mnuchin’s travels with the Secret Service weren’t all business, however. Over the six months, the records show three separate trips to Cabo San Lucas — the Mexican resort, where Mnuchin had also vacationed during Trump’s presidency.

To guard Mnuchin during those three trips, the records show, the Secret Service paid $56,000 for hotel rooms and $2,000 to rent golf carts.

Your tax dollars are hard at work protecting the Donald's immediate family and ex-aides no matter their status as millionaires or their vacation junkets.