No toilets for Secret Service agents in Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's home, agents used Obama's garage
Since September 2017, the federal government has been spending $3,000 a month — more than $100,000 tax money to date — to rent a basement studio, with a bathroom, near Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's rented home in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood. Why? Because the Kushners won't allow the Secret Service agents guarding them with their lives to use any of their 6.5 toilets in their home.
Usually, agents are allowed to use a garage, pool house or other such outbuilding as a command post, break room and bathroom. This allows the agents to keep some distance from the living quarters of those they are protecting. But not allowing agents to use any toilet facilities or not reserving a space for them on such a sprawling property, is an unprecedented occurrence.
White House spokesman Judd Deere denied that the Kushners prohibited Secret Service agents from using the bathrooms in their home, stating, "It was only after a decision by the [Secret Service] was made that their detail sought other accommodations." However multiple sources told The Washington Post, that "the bathrooms inside the Trump/Kushner home were declared off-limits to the people protecting them from the beginning".
It started with a porta-potty
The Secret Service agents assigned to the Kushners reportedly spent months searching for a place they could poop and pee in peace. At first, they resorted to an unsightly porta-potty on the sidewalk on Tracy Place NW, enraging neighbors who had never seen such a sight.
Dianne Bruce, who until recently lived across the street from Kushner and Ivanka spoke to the Washington Post about the ordeal. “When they put the porta-potty right outside on the sidewalk we weren’t allowed to walk on, that was when people in the neighborhood said, ‘That’s really not acceptable,'" she said, saying the Kushners had behaved like they were "royalty".
Then the Obamas' garage
After that, the agents turned to colleagues working on other details near the Kushners, namely the Obamas and the Pences. The agents reportedly began using a bathroom in a garage at the Obamas’ house, which the former president’s protective detail had turned into a command post.
They also began driving a mile to Pence’s home at the Naval Observatory, where they were allowed to use a bathroom in a stand-alone guard station. If they didn’t have time to make that trip, they would rely on nearby businesses with restroom facilities and restaurants.
The last and permanent solution was found when the Secret Service managed to rent a basement unit with a bathroom in the house across the street. One law enforcement official, familiar with the situation and speaking on condition of anonymity to The Post said: "It’s the first time I ever heard of a Secret Service detail having to go to these extremes to find a bathroom”.
Spending $144,000 of tax dollars for a bathroom unit
By the time the lease runs out on the basement unit on September 26, 2021, a total of $144,000 of tax dollars will have been spent for the space. It is still not clear when the Kushners will be moving out of the rented Kalorama house.
This is not the only time the Secret Service has had to spend money to protect President Trump’s children. In October, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. got the federal government to cut a check for approximately $238K for different Trump properties they visited with their families because they billed them for the agents’ lodgings.