Silke Jasso
An article originating on a taxpayer-funded State Department website promotes Mar-a-Lago, the lavish estate founded and furnished by Marjorie Merriwether Post in the mid-1920s and owned as a for-profit club by President Donald Trump.
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President Donald Trump purchased the estate in 1985, when he was a private citizen. He turned the home into a lavish country club as well as a residence for himself. Annual membership dues top $14,000, and the initial cost of a membership is $200,000. Before Trump became president, the initial cost of a membership was $100,000.
RELATED: President Trump’s frequent travel to Mar-A-Lago comes at a serious cost to taxpayers
Trump, who’s spent almost a quarter of his days as president at the Florida estate, likes it there. But it seems like the State Department does, too — and State Department promotion of the private resort would appear to be a flagrant violation of U.S. law prohibiting the use of a public office for private gain, specifically the appearance of government sanction or endorsement. In short, this is almost certainly illegal.
The ShareAmerica post appears on the website belonging to the American Embassy in Mongolia and the American Embassy in the UK, and is promoted on the Facebook page of the American Embassy in Portugal and elsewhere.
Copy on the site says Trump is “belatedly fulfilling the dream of Mar-a-Lago’s original owner and designer” and invokes the names of foreign dignitaries who have visited the private club during his presidency. The site explicitly names Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A disclaimer at the bottom of the site certifies the site as one belonging to the State Department. The post is tagged under “US History,” “Cultural Preservation” and “President Trump.”
