Trump’s election fraud falsehoods have cost taxpayers $519 million - and counting
The disgraced ex-president's onslaught of falsehoods about the election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot - and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.
Toluse Olorunnipa, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post
Updated: 14 hours ago
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot - and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.
The total so far: $519 million.
The costs have mounted daily as government agencies at all levels have been forced to devote public funds to respond to actions taken by Trump and his supporters, according to a Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, as well as interviews with government officials. The expenditures include legal fees prompted by dozens of fruitless lawsuits, enhanced security in response to death threats against poll workers, and costly repairs needed after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That attack triggered the expensive massing of thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington amid fears of additional extremist violence.
Although more than $480 million of the total is attributable to the military’s estimated expenses for the troop deployment through mid-March, the financial impact of the president’s refusal to concede the election is probably much higher than what has been documented thus far, and the true costs may never be known.
Many officials contacted by The Post said they were still trying to tally the cost of rapidly scaling up security to deal with the increased threat of violence from Trump supporters. Others have given up on trying to measure their outlays - perplexed over how to calculate the financial impact of a president’s injecting so much instability into the democratic system - opting instead simply to absorb them as the cost of doing business in the Trump era.
Some officials have shifted their attention to planning additional security measures in the volatile environment fostered by Trump’s conspiratorial brand of politics.
“I think anytime you see an event like we saw on January 6, it changes your perspective going forward. You don’t take things for granted like we used to,” said Michael Rapich, superintendent of the Utah Highway Patrol, which spent $227,000 on Jan. 17 to deploy 300 troopers to the State Capitol after threats of an armed siege by Trump supporters ahead of the inauguration of President Biden. “It is an incredible amount of money to spend.”
Other states spent even more, and officials are beginning to draft new security budgets that suggest costs for public safety will grow significantly in the future as a result of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The cost to the federal government continues to grow daily as thousands of National Guard troops patrol Washington and lawmakers consider supplemental spending to bolster their security.
The 25,000 troops that were deployed in Washington traveled on military planes and stayed in local hotels - their presence aimed at restoring order in the nation’s capital after an attempted insurrection that overwhelmed the Capitol Police and led to five deaths.
The Guard deployment’s estimated cost, first reported by Bloomberg News, covers the troop presence at the Capitol through mid-March, according to Defense Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal figures. With an unprecedented show of force that included checkpoints and militarized zones in Washington, the troops thwarted any effort to disrupt Biden’s swearing-in, which took place on the same platform stormed by Trump-supporting rioters two weeks earlier.
It is not clear whether the House Democrats managing Trump’s impeachment trial plan to bring up the financial costs borne by taxpayers as a result of what critics have called his “big lie.” The trial begins Tuesday, and Democrats have focused mainly on Trump’s speech to supporters shortly before the Capitol riot.
A spokeswoman for Trump’s presidential office did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s defense lawyers have argued that he was within his rights to publicly question the election’s integrity and should not be held responsible for the actions of those who attacked the Capitol after his speech.
Several states are working to calculate the taxpayer costs for additional security and related expenses in the aftermath of the November election and the Jan. 6 protests.
In California, state officials estimated that they spent about $19 million, deploying 1,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of state troopers from Jan. 14 to Jan. 21 to protect the State Capitol and other locations.
“That’s a lot of money, even by California standards, for one week’s worth of work,” California Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said in an interview. “But it was necessary work to make sure that we didn’t see the damage that could have occurred, had we had a crowd that was bent on doing damage to the building.”
In Ohio, taxpayers spent $1.2 million to deploy National Guard troops to the closed Statehouse building in Columbus. The New Mexico legislature increased its appropriation for Capitol security during the 60-day session by almost 40 percent this month, handing taxpayers a bill of $1.5 million for personnel, equipment and other expenses, officials said.
Taxpayers paid to deploy helicopters to monitor potential demonstrations in Texas and North Carolina, temporary fencing around the capitols in Lansing, Mich., and Olympia, Wash., and extra security details for state lawmakers attending legislative sessions.
District of Columbia police dispatched 850 officers to help defend the Capitol, spending more than $8.8 million during the week of Jan. 6, acting police chief Robert Contee III said in his opening statement before a closed session of the House Appropriations Committee on Jan. 26. Contee said the final tab probably will be much higher, and police and prosecutors will be “engaged for years” investigating and trying the rioters.
“The costs for this insurrection - both human and monetary - will be steep,” he said. “The immediate fiscal impact is still being calculated.”
For many states, the post-Jan. 6 costs added to a tab that has been growing since shortly after polls closed on Nov. 3. Trump’s false assertion that night that he had won the election and that it was being stolen in ballot-processing centers led to credible threats against poll workers and facilities where they were working. Between additional legal fees to fend off conspiracy-theory-laced lawsuits from Trump and enhanced security for election officials, states’ costs resulting from the president’s central fabrication about the Nov. 3 vote have escalated rapidly.
States spent untold millions of dollars on election recounts not required by law but demanded by Trump, and on legal and state legislative hearings.
Protesters, some armed, massed at ballot-processing centers in places including Maricopa County, Ariz.; Detroit; and Las Vegas in the days after Nov. 3, echoing Trump’s rhetoric about a rigged election.
The additional costs come as many states are resource-strapped as a result of a pandemic that has racked the economy and decimated state budgets.
Chris Loftis, communications director for the Washington State Patrol, said the new “staggeringly high” costs for security and other expenses constituted “a wasteful distraction of essential and diminishing resources.”
Not included in the more than $4 million estimated security bill that Washington state taxpayers face is the yet-to-be-determined cost of repairing a gate at the governor’s mansion broken by armed demonstrators on Jan. 6.
“Not only have our people, places and processes of democracy been attacked and damaged, but the continuing expense of this new security environment will take away from funds that could have been used for covid vaccines and treatment” and other critical expenses, Loftis said.
(Continued)
The disgraced ex-president's onslaught of falsehoods about the election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot - and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.
Toluse Olorunnipa, Michelle Ye Hee Lee, The Washington Post
Updated: 14 hours ago
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump’s onslaught of falsehoods about the November election misled millions of Americans, undermined faith in the electoral system, sparked a deadly riot - and has now left taxpayers with a large, and growing, bill.
The total so far: $519 million.
The costs have mounted daily as government agencies at all levels have been forced to devote public funds to respond to actions taken by Trump and his supporters, according to a Washington Post review of local, state and federal spending records, as well as interviews with government officials. The expenditures include legal fees prompted by dozens of fruitless lawsuits, enhanced security in response to death threats against poll workers, and costly repairs needed after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That attack triggered the expensive massing of thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington amid fears of additional extremist violence.
Although more than $480 million of the total is attributable to the military’s estimated expenses for the troop deployment through mid-March, the financial impact of the president’s refusal to concede the election is probably much higher than what has been documented thus far, and the true costs may never be known.
Many officials contacted by The Post said they were still trying to tally the cost of rapidly scaling up security to deal with the increased threat of violence from Trump supporters. Others have given up on trying to measure their outlays - perplexed over how to calculate the financial impact of a president’s injecting so much instability into the democratic system - opting instead simply to absorb them as the cost of doing business in the Trump era.
Some officials have shifted their attention to planning additional security measures in the volatile environment fostered by Trump’s conspiratorial brand of politics.
“I think anytime you see an event like we saw on January 6, it changes your perspective going forward. You don’t take things for granted like we used to,” said Michael Rapich, superintendent of the Utah Highway Patrol, which spent $227,000 on Jan. 17 to deploy 300 troopers to the State Capitol after threats of an armed siege by Trump supporters ahead of the inauguration of President Biden. “It is an incredible amount of money to spend.”
Other states spent even more, and officials are beginning to draft new security budgets that suggest costs for public safety will grow significantly in the future as a result of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The cost to the federal government continues to grow daily as thousands of National Guard troops patrol Washington and lawmakers consider supplemental spending to bolster their security.
The 25,000 troops that were deployed in Washington traveled on military planes and stayed in local hotels - their presence aimed at restoring order in the nation’s capital after an attempted insurrection that overwhelmed the Capitol Police and led to five deaths.
The Guard deployment’s estimated cost, first reported by Bloomberg News, covers the troop presence at the Capitol through mid-March, according to Defense Department officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal figures. With an unprecedented show of force that included checkpoints and militarized zones in Washington, the troops thwarted any effort to disrupt Biden’s swearing-in, which took place on the same platform stormed by Trump-supporting rioters two weeks earlier.
It is not clear whether the House Democrats managing Trump’s impeachment trial plan to bring up the financial costs borne by taxpayers as a result of what critics have called his “big lie.” The trial begins Tuesday, and Democrats have focused mainly on Trump’s speech to supporters shortly before the Capitol riot.
A spokeswoman for Trump’s presidential office did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s defense lawyers have argued that he was within his rights to publicly question the election’s integrity and should not be held responsible for the actions of those who attacked the Capitol after his speech.
Several states are working to calculate the taxpayer costs for additional security and related expenses in the aftermath of the November election and the Jan. 6 protests.
In California, state officials estimated that they spent about $19 million, deploying 1,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of state troopers from Jan. 14 to Jan. 21 to protect the State Capitol and other locations.
“That’s a lot of money, even by California standards, for one week’s worth of work,” California Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer said in an interview. “But it was necessary work to make sure that we didn’t see the damage that could have occurred, had we had a crowd that was bent on doing damage to the building.”
In Ohio, taxpayers spent $1.2 million to deploy National Guard troops to the closed Statehouse building in Columbus. The New Mexico legislature increased its appropriation for Capitol security during the 60-day session by almost 40 percent this month, handing taxpayers a bill of $1.5 million for personnel, equipment and other expenses, officials said.
Taxpayers paid to deploy helicopters to monitor potential demonstrations in Texas and North Carolina, temporary fencing around the capitols in Lansing, Mich., and Olympia, Wash., and extra security details for state lawmakers attending legislative sessions.
District of Columbia police dispatched 850 officers to help defend the Capitol, spending more than $8.8 million during the week of Jan. 6, acting police chief Robert Contee III said in his opening statement before a closed session of the House Appropriations Committee on Jan. 26. Contee said the final tab probably will be much higher, and police and prosecutors will be “engaged for years” investigating and trying the rioters.
“The costs for this insurrection - both human and monetary - will be steep,” he said. “The immediate fiscal impact is still being calculated.”
For many states, the post-Jan. 6 costs added to a tab that has been growing since shortly after polls closed on Nov. 3. Trump’s false assertion that night that he had won the election and that it was being stolen in ballot-processing centers led to credible threats against poll workers and facilities where they were working. Between additional legal fees to fend off conspiracy-theory-laced lawsuits from Trump and enhanced security for election officials, states’ costs resulting from the president’s central fabrication about the Nov. 3 vote have escalated rapidly.
States spent untold millions of dollars on election recounts not required by law but demanded by Trump, and on legal and state legislative hearings.
Protesters, some armed, massed at ballot-processing centers in places including Maricopa County, Ariz.; Detroit; and Las Vegas in the days after Nov. 3, echoing Trump’s rhetoric about a rigged election.
The additional costs come as many states are resource-strapped as a result of a pandemic that has racked the economy and decimated state budgets.
Chris Loftis, communications director for the Washington State Patrol, said the new “staggeringly high” costs for security and other expenses constituted “a wasteful distraction of essential and diminishing resources.”
Not included in the more than $4 million estimated security bill that Washington state taxpayers face is the yet-to-be-determined cost of repairing a gate at the governor’s mansion broken by armed demonstrators on Jan. 6.
“Not only have our people, places and processes of democracy been attacked and damaged, but the continuing expense of this new security environment will take away from funds that could have been used for covid vaccines and treatment” and other critical expenses, Loftis said.
(Continued)
