How much has the Secret Service paid to stay at Trump properties since 2017?

1. The smallest published tallies: Washington Post, People and early disclosures

Early reporting based on receipts obtained by The Washington Post and other outlets documented at least roughly $471,000 in direct Secret Service charges for agent lodging at Trump properties between January 2017 and April 2018, a figure repeated in summaries by People and cited by House Democrats when pressing the agency for more details ^{[1] [5]}.

2. Public Citizen and The Post expand the bill to at least $628,000

Additional records produced after protracted FOIA litigation by Public Citizen added about $157,000 in previously unpublished receipts, bringing the combined documented room charges identified in those releases to about $628,000 in Secret Service billing to Trump properties since 2017, according to reporting and document reviews by The Washington Post and others ^{[2] [6]}.

3. Congressional oversight widens the estimate to roughly $1.4 million

A Democratic House Oversight Committee review later reported more than $1.4 million in Secret Service spending at Trump-owned U.S. properties between Jan. 20, 2017, and Sept. 15, 2021, and documented instances of nightly rates far above standard government per diems — including charges cited as high as $1,185 per room — while noting the committee’s data may still be incomplete ^{[3] [7]}.

4. Watchdog aggregations push the total higher — CREW’s near-$2 million claim

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) analyzed government procurement and Secret Service records and reported roughly $1.75 million in payments to Trump businesses, concluding the true total could be “nearly $2 million,” while also warning the available documents appear incomplete and that some payments may be obscured by inconsistent vendor labeling (e.g., Mar‑a‑Lago entries appearing under other course names) ^{[4] [8]}.

5. Context, contested explanations and missing pieces

House Democrats and watchdogs emphasized that many of the records are partial, that some stays were billed at rates exceeding government per diem and that the Secret Service had not consistently produced semiannual expense reports, while Trump Organization officials repeatedly insisted to media that the company charged only “at cost” or housekeeping fees — assertions that watchdogs dispute based on the receipts showing higher nightly rates and monthly cottage rentals ^{[9] [5] [10]}.

6. What can’t be resolved from available reporting

Public records and investigative reporting document multiple, overlapping tallies: $471,000 (initial WaPo-based reports), $628,000 (Public Citizen additions), $1.4M (House Oversight findings) and watchdog claims approaching $1.75–$2M, but none of the cited sources provides a single reconciled, exhaustively documented total that covers all Secret Service expenditures (lodging, command posts, perimeter contracts, or associated government travel costs) from 2017 onward, and several sources explicitly warn that the datasets are incomplete or differently categorized, so a definitive final sum is not available in the public record reviewed here ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [9]}.

7. Bottom line for readers and accountability questions

Based on the available, cited reporting, taxpayers were billed at least in the mid-six-figures for Secret Service lodging at Trump properties with credible, documented tallies rising into the low-to-mid seven figures depending on which compiled dataset is accepted — watchdogs and Congress estimate between about $1.4 million and nearly $2 million — but the absence of a fully reconciled accounting and inconsistent recordkeeping means the exact cumulative amount since 2017 remains uncertain and subject to further document release or official reconciliation ^{[2] [3] [4]}.