St. Cloud, Minnesota , is still seeking payment for holding a rally for former President Donald Trump after the Trump campaign missed the payment deadline.
The central Minnesota city sent a second invoice to the Trump campaign after it missed the Oct. 10 deadline to pay for about $209,000 in city services used for a July rally, according to the Star Tribune . The St. Cloud inquiry adds to a growing list of cities that the Trump campaign has not paid back.
The original invoice was dated Sept. 10 and goes into detail on the costs that the city took on when hosting Trump. St. Cloud officials said they paid about $63,000 for police costs, $62,000 regarding a construction project near the campus, $60,500 for public services, $21,000 for fire department costs and about $2,000 for IT-related costs.
St. Cloud City Administrator Matt Staehling said the city does not bill the White House for official visits, but it does bill candidates who visit for campaign stops and similar events that require public services from the city. St. Cloud State University officials did confirm that they were paid the $35,000 fee they charged the Trump campaign to rent their facility.
In Minneapolis, city officials for years tried to get Trump’s campaign to pay the $530,000 in overtime and expenses after Trump used Target Center as the site of one of his rallies in 2019. Minneapolis eventually received around $100,000 more than a year after the rally.
At least four cities and one county across the country are waiting for the Trump campaign to pay them, totaling $750,000 in bills, according to NBC News . Some of those missing payments date back to eight years ago, during Trump’s first presidential campaign.
One of the largest unpaid bills is more than half a million dollars. El Paso, Texas, is looking to be reimbursed for more than $569,200 in expenses from a 2019 Trump visit, according to an invoice provided by city spokeswoman Laura Cruz Acosta. The initial bill for more than $470,000 grew after the city charged the Trump campaign a late fee for not paying on time.
Trump recently hosted his third rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, but the city said it has not been paid back for the first two. A city official told NBC that Trump owes Erie more than $40,000 for the rallies he held there in 2018 and 2023.
Still, it’s not entirely clear who should foot the bill. The Trump campaign previously told the Washington Examiner that it is the responsibility of the Secret Service to pay for these types of services.
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Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC that the Secret Service, not the campaign, is usually the body that requests local assistance for such campaign activities, but he noted the agency “lacks a mechanism to reimburse local governments for their support during protective events.”
When it was reported that President Joe Biden’s and Trump’s campaigns did not pay the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, for campaign visits, the Biden campaign paid their bills almost immediately, according to the mayor of Green Bay.
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