As soon as Donald Trump was elected, he extended Secret Service protection to his favorite child, Ivanka Trump, and her family, which includes Jared Kushner and their children. Ivanka and Jared have the kind of Secret Service entourage one would expect for a First Lady or a VP, not the baby-whispering a–hole daughter. Javanka moved into a rented home in DC’s elite Kalorama neighborhood, and the Secret Service tried to make the property as secure as possible, but they ran into issues almost immediately because they needed to set up a command post and some facilities where the agents could use a restroom, sit down, get a briefing, etc. Instead, Jared and Ivanka refused to allow the agents access to the six-and-a-half bathrooms in their home. So the detail basically went on an expensive multi-year ordeal just so the agents assigned to Javanka could pee.
Many U.S. Secret Service agents have stood guard in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood, home over the years to Cabinet secretaries and former presidents. Those agents have had to worry about death threats, secure perimeters and suspicious strangers. But with the arrival of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they had a new worry: finding a toilet.
Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job, according to neighbors and law enforcement officials. After resorting to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the nearby home of former president Barack Obama and the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Pence, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own. But it came at a cost to U.S. taxpayers. Since September 2017, the federal government has been spending $3,000 a month — more than $100,000 to date — to rent a basement studio, with a bathroom, from a neighbor of the Kushner family.
A White House spokesperson denied that Trump and Kushner restricted agents from their 5,000-square-foot home, with its six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, and asserted that it was the Secret Service’s decision not to allow the protective detail inside. That account is disputed by a law enforcement official familiar with the situation, who said the agents were kept out at the family’s request.
[From WaPo]
The full WaPo story has details about how agents on the Javanka detail spent months stopping by the Obamas’ home to use the facilities set up by the Obama team. The agents also tried to make it to the Pences’ residence. There was a Porto-potty in front of the Javanka home for a short time before the neighbors protested. Finally, the solution was that the Secret Service had to rent a basement apartment across the street, just to pee. And while Jared and Ivanka’s spokesperson threw a fit to the Washington Post about this story, WaPo had the details from “two law enforcement officials,” both of whom said “the bathrooms inside the Trump/Kushner home were declared off-limits to the people protecting them from the beginning. One official did not know the reason for this restriction, while the other said it was instigated by the couple.”
People are comparing it to that plotline from The Help, where Bryce Dallas Howard’s character goes on a rampage about “the help” using the bathrooms of white people. I don’t know, I get the comparison and all, but mostly I just think this is Ivanka being a clueless a–hole and not understanding what the Secret Service needed to protect her. It’s all so wasteful and ignorant.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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