The private club in Florida served as Donald Trump’s home and de facto seat of power at times, drawing world leaders and tycoons alike
Trump negotiated with and entertained Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe there and in 2019, the cast ofincluded the Chinese former owner of a massage parlour snared in a high-profile prostitution sting, a Russian investor wanted in his home country for tax fraud and a cosmetic dentist who influenced Trump’s thinking on veterans’ care by writing policy advice on a cocktail napkin.
The use of the property as a de facto presidential court sparked controversy. “The Mar-a-Lago club has turned into a pay-for-access to the president club, with a president with almost no knowledge of governmental policy,” said, a Washington-based pro-transparency group that criticised Trump for continuing to profit from his business operations while in office.
“If you can whisper in his ear and tell him anything, he may well think it’s sensible and he may well act upon it.”Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images “When he’s there, it’s a circus,” said Palm Beach society writer Jose Lambiet, who chronicled Trump’s tenure at Mar-a-Lago. “It’s not just the ethics of this, but the visuals are terrible. No policy should be done this way. He thinks it’s cool, that he was elected for this stuff, but I don’t think he was. The ethics of people having access to him through Mar-a-Lago should be investigated because it allows rich people to have access to him in a way that regular people don’t.
Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, with their son Barron, arrive for a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in 2017.