What Is This, And Why Are We Taxpayers Still Paying For Trump To Use It?

Do you know what the above logo stands for?

I didn’t, which sent me on a quest for information.

First: GSA stands for General Services Administration.

Second: The General Services Administration is “an independent agency of the U.S. government established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies.”

Could that be any vaguer?

Third: The GSA headquarters are in this building in Washington, DC:

And though I can see the American flag on its roof, I’m not seeing the GSA’s flags, of which it has at least three:

Why any federal agency requires at least three flags is a mystery to me.

So is the size of the GSA’s budget:

Yes, you read that correctly:

$53.76 billion in FY 2022.

What does the GSA actually do?

What are we taxpayers getting for that almost $54 billion?

Here’s the GSA’s mission statement, from their website:

Could that be any vaguer?

To clarify at least a bit, I found something specific in a December 7 Washington Post article (more from the article to come) that said one role of the GSA is to:

“assist former presidents during their transition to private life…”

This is also a mystery to me.

Former presidents are just that – former. They’re private citizens. Why are we taxpayers paying to move them out of the White House to…wherever?

Can’t former presidents pack their own stuff and call these guys:

Like the rest of us private citizens do?

Apparently not.

So in 2021, when Trump was vacating the White House, he had the services of the GSA to transport his stuff.

But not all of that stuff went to his residence, Mar-a-Lago.

No, it appears – again, according to the Washington Post article – that the GSA…

“…helped rent the storage unit at a private facility in West Palm Beach on July 21, 2021. The unit was needed to store items that had been held at an office in Northern Virginia used by Trump staffers in the months just after he left office.”

I haven’t been to Mar-a-Lago, but it looks like it’s got plenty of storage rooms to me:

Why a storage unit at a private facility was rented…

And paid for by us taxpayers…

Is…you guessed it:

A mystery to me.

And we didn’t pay just for storage – the Washington Post article said:

“…the GSA and Trump staffers worked together to arrange to ship several pallets of boxes and other items weighing more than 3,000 pounds from Northern Virginia to the Florida storage unit in September 2021.”

So the Florida storage facility was rented in July 2021 but Trump’s stuff wasn’t moved until September 2021.

We paid for that empty space.

And we also paid for shipping 1½ tons of Trump’s stuff.

It’s now December 2022, and we’ve been paying for that storage facility for 18 months.

Shipping + storage =

And what is all this stuff in the storage facility? Washington Post:

“A person familiar with the matter said the storage unit had a mix of boxes, gifts, suits and clothes, among other things. ‘It was suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things,’ this person said. ‘To my knowledge, he has never even been to that storage unit. I don’t think anyone in Trump World could tell you what’s in that storage unit.’”

So 1½ tons of Trump stuff just sitting while the meter kept running, wasting our…

Stuff just sitting…ignored…languishing…

Until this:

“Lawyers for Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, FL used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Over the past almost week, you’ve no doubt heard the story – many times.

What you may not have heard was that to conduct the search, Trump’s lawyers, according to this article…

“…utilized a firm that had expertise in searching for documents.”

Which presents yet another mystery:

What requires expertise about going through boxes in storage and ascertaining that these items over there – they’re wrestling belts; and these items here – these are classified documents?

Here’s a visual aid to help – wrestling belts, left; classified documents, right:

Looks pretty straightforward to me.

The storage facility search was part of a multi-part effort that also included the search “experts” going through other Trump properties.

The Washington Post article said

“The former president’s lawyers have told federal authorities no classified material was found in additional searches of Trump Tower in New York and his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.”

But, according to the New York Times article:

“People close to Mr. Trump had said earlier on Wednesday that no classified material had been found during the searches, a claim that was later proved incorrect.”