The State Department and at least two embassies circulated a blog post detailing the history of the president’s South Florida club. | AP Photo State Department, U.S. embassies promoted Trump's Mar-a-Lago

President Donald Trump isn’t the only one promoting his private Mar-a-Lago club as the “winter White House.” His foreign policy team has gotten in on it too.

The State Department and at least two U.S. embassies — the United Kingdom and Albania — earlier this month circulated a 400-word blog post detailing the long history of the president’s South Florida club, which has been open to dues-paying members since the mid-1990s and is now used by Trump for frequent weekend getaways. He has hosted foreign leaders there twice.


The blog post — written by the State Department-managed site Share America — described the “dream deferred” when Mar-a-Lago’s original builder, Marjorie Merriweather Post, willed the property to the federal government upon her death in 1973, with the stipulation it be used as a winter retreat for the president.

“Her plan didn’t work, however,” the post’s author, Leigh Hartman, wrote, explaining how the government returned the property to Post’s trust because it cost too much money to maintain. Trump bought the property and its furniture in 1985, and he opened it a decade later as a private club.

“Post’s dream of a winter White House came true with Trump’s election in 2016,” Hartman wrote.

Share America removed the post on Monday after the State Department’s efforts to share the article — originally published just before Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago — drew criticism. "The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post," read a statement on the site in place of the post.

The post drew scrutiny Monday after reporters linked to it on Twitter. The ethics watchdog group American Oversight said it would file complaints with the State Department’s Inspector General and the Office of Government Ethics, and it also said it would write to Capitol Hill oversight panels urging them to launch their own investigations.

Democrats also quickly piled on.

Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics attorney and frequent Trump critic, said the State Department ran afoul of U.S. laws prohibiting public officials from using their office for private gain. Those violations “have gone viral thruout [sic] our embassies,” he wrote on Twitter. “Trump gutting foreign aid to convert embassies 2 trump promo outlets!”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also slammed Trump’s administration, linking to an April 5 tweet from the State Department’s Economic & Business Affairs office that promoted the president’s club by asking: “Curious about the President’s winter White House also known as Mar-a-Lago?”

“Yes, I am curious @StateDept. Why are taxpayer $$ promoting the President’s private country club,” Wyden asked Monday on Twitter. A few minutes later, the senator posted the full Share America article “in its kleptocratic glory.”

State Department acting press secretary Mark Toner told reporters Monday during an afternoon briefing that he wasn’t aware of the blog post. Embassy officials did not immediately respond to requests from POLITICO for comment.