Trump’s press secretary proudly holds up donation check — while apparently revealing banking info to the world

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Donald Trump’s latest press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, held up what appeared to be a real check with sensitive financial information during a press briefing Friday, May 22, 2020, reported The New York Times.

Trump pledged to donate his entire salary of $400,000 to charity on a quarterly basis and McEnany held up the check as a way to illustrate — and perhaps prove — the $100,000 donation to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Like all real checks, the document included bank routing and account numbers running along the bottom.

The New York Times reports the check appears to be a real one linked to a Capital One account.

In many situations where checks are shown in a public setting, all or part of these numbers are typically covered in some way. In some cases, facsimiles are used instead to avoid divulging any sensitive info.

The White House told the Times that check was not a “mock” check.

If the check shown was drawn on Trump’s actual account, McEnany may have revealed his account number to millions of people.

Technically, anyone with the numbers on the bottom of any check can potentially withdraw money from that account or perform other financial actions or transactions.

In addition, digits from account numbers are often used as a way to verify customer service requests are coming from an authorized user.

A security and identity theft expert interview by The Times noted that Trump’s account likely has extra security on it, but keeping these numbers visible isn’t best practice.

It’s also worth noting that, by definition, anyone in possession of or who sees any check automatically has access to the same information for whatever account was used to write the check.