Hello! We’re trying to answer a simple question: how much taxpayer money has been paid to @realDonaldTrump’s private business?

Here’s what we’ve learned so far, in four tweets:

First we learned what @realdonaldtrump’s company *said* was happening.

They said that, when Trump’s aides and Secret Service agents needed rooms at Trump properties, the company charged super-low rates. “Like $50 bucks,” per night, @erictrump said.

So we looked for evidence to confirm Trump Org’s claim — like receipts showing they had actually charged the government that $50 per night rate.

We have found none.

What we did find was lots of cases where @realdonaldtrump’s company charged much more than that — transferring taxpayer dollars into the president’s business.

The Trump family had turned their Secret Service details into a source of private revenue.

These transactions were done with little public notice and no outside oversight. We still don’t know how much has been paid in total.

But, we’re slowly uncovering more and more of them. We’ve found $1.2M in taxpayer payments to @realDonaldTrump’s business so far.