RNC pays face value for Trump party's luxury seats at World Series game
Source: Washington Post
The Republican National Committee paid $465 per seat in a luxury suite for President Trump, 11 members of Congress and senior White House staff to attend Sunday night’s World Series game after the president said he wanted to attend, two officials with knowledge of the arrangement said Friday. The rate meant that Major League Baseball charged the RNC for about 30 seats at a total cost of about $14,000, according to one of the officials, who was involved in the payment. The suite was located along the third-base line near home plate.
The seats were much cheaper than even standing-room-only seats in Nationals Park, many of which were going for $1,000 or more on the secondary market before the Series came to Washington for games three through five. One of the Republican officials, who along with others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal RNC matters, said MLB charged face value for box seats and sent an invoice to the committee. A White House official said it would have been impossible for the president to sit anywhere other than a secure box because of Secret Service safety requirements. Spokespeople for MLB and the Nationals did not respond to requests for comment.
Members did not receive a ticket for the game and were whisked in with the president, according to people familiar with the arrangement — going through a tunnel, into a freight elevator and into the luxury box about eight minutes before the first pitch. Both House and Senate ethics rules generally allow members to attend events free if they are legitimate fundraisers. But Republican officials said the game was not considered a fundraiser and the Trump campaign did not play a role, leading to questions among some members about whether they needed to pay for tickets.
“We paid for the box because the president was there,” a senior Republican official said. The official said that it was valuable for members to discuss issues with the president about their districts and the national political landscape.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-pays-face-value-for-trump-partys-luxury-seats-at-world-series-game/2019/11/01/db3c5cf4-fc09-11e9-9534-e0dbcc9f5683_story.html
Can you imagine if the DNC had done something like this? It would have become "World Series-gate".
= new reply since forum marked as read
What I posted here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=2390124
I.e., the RNC providing those tickets to whoever went into that box, would be considered a "gift" to those Congress persons that is not being applied towards some type of campaigning for them.
And if they had been regular federal employees and didn't pay for their own tickets, then they could potentially kiss their jobs goodbye (or at least face some kind of discipline including reprimands or suspensions), and I say this as a retired 30+ year fed.
even in Cuba
