Two more Trump administration cabinet officials are facing tough questions about their use of government and private charter aircraft while on the job, just a week after the president fired Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for abusing the same privilege.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has used government planes instead of cheaper commercial airline flights seven times in the past eight months.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Chao used the government planes to fly to Paris for an annual air show and to Sardinia for a meeting of industrialized democracies. Other destinations included cities within an hour’s flight of Washington.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin billed taxpayers $800,000 for just seven government aircraft flights.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General said Thursday that everything was legal, but wrote that the department had offered insufficient justification for not traveling on commercial aircraft.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (pictured with his wife Louise Linton) spent $800,000 of taxpayer funds to take just seven trips on military jets – and the government says it was all legal
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao used government planes instead of flying commercial for an air show in Paris and a meeting of industrialized democracies in Sardinia – and she flew on the jets to other destinations within an hour’s flight of Washington
Mnuchin’s use of a plane at taxpayer expense to travel to Kentucky in August with his wife to view the solar eclipse and speak to business leaders prompted an outcry from Democratic party lawmakers and spurred the Treasury’s watchdog agency to examine whether it violated travel or ethics policies.
Cabinet members rarely use government planes or chartered aircraft for domestic travel, but the practice has received significant attention in the wake of Mnuchin’s trip.
On Friday, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after an outcry over his use of private charter planes for government business at a cost of more than $1 million.
He has pledged to reimburse the government, but will pay less than $52,000 – the cost of the equivalent commercial fare for the routes he flew.
Mnuchin said on Sunday he did not regret using a government plane for the Kentucky trip, calling it ‘completely justifiable.’
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was forced out last week after it emerged that he spent more than $1 million on chartered jets (the cost of flying Air Force One for less than six hours)
‘It was approved by the White House and there were reasons why we needed to use that plane,’ he said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ program.
Mnuchin told NBC that he would only use a private plane for government purposes ‘if either there was a national security issue or we couldn’t get somewhere.’
Mnuchin’s travel requests included one, later withdrawn, for a government plane for use on his European honeymoon.
The Treasury Department has described Mnuchin’s August trip to Kentucky as official government travel. Mnuchin spoke to business leaders in Louisville and visited Fort Knox, the site of significant U.S. gold reserves.
Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, also viewed the Aug. 21 solar eclipse in Kentucky with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others.
Public uproar over the trip began to mount after Linton posted a photo of herself deplaning on social media and listed the expensive designer brands she was wearing in the caption.
Chao, the transportation secretary, uses jets owned by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is part of her department.
The most common plane sue uses is a Gulfstream IV business jet. Chao also has access to a Cessna business jet that the FAA charges other government agencies about $5,000 an hour to fly.
The planes are housed at a hangar at Reagan National Airport close to Washington.
One of the benefits for officials who use the planes is that they are able to avoid airport security lines. Past transportation secretaries also occasionally made use of the planes, and they are often used to transport accident investigators to air crash sites.
Chao is the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Her office has said in the past that she tries to fly commercial when possible, and uses government planes when commercial flights aren’t available or for ‘security protocols.’
Lead by example? President Donald Trump has used Air Force One 17 times this year to spend weekends at his golf and resort properties in Florida and New Jersey
Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, was the official ‘Winter White House’ this year, and got seven presidential visits on the taxpayers’ dime
The White House insisted on Thursday that taxpayers should continue to pay $180,000 per hour for President Donald Trump’s weekend flights aboard Air Force One to and from his properties in New Jersey and Florida.
Press secretary Sarah Sanders, however, dodged a question from DailyMail.com about whether that use of taxpayer money set a permissive tone that seemed to justify his cabinet members’ use of private and government jets for their own travel.
Trump is ‘not allowed to travel in a different way other than in a secure airplane as Air Force One,’ Sanders said during Thursday’s press briefing.
And she insisted that ‘every weekend that he’s traveling, no matter where he is, the president is working.’
But in response to a separate question about whether Trump ‘undercut’ his secretary of state after he was accused of calling the president a ‘moron,’ Sanders made it clear that it’s Trump who ‘is the leader of the cabinet. He sets the tone. He sets the agenda.’
‘This is a president that is committed to helping move his agenda forward, and certainly I think that those weekends have been very successful in doing that,’ she added.
She cited key meetings with world leaders, but didn’t address why they couldn’t have taken place at the White House.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was kicked out the door last Friday following revelations that he spent more than $1 million in taxpayer funds on private flights, largely for routes that are served by commercial airlines.
White House counselor Kellyannd Conway was on at least one of those flights, a 137-mile trip from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia and back – at a cost of $25,000.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry chartered a jet to Ohio a week ago.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has spent $58,000 of government funds on non-commercial flights to his home state of Oklahoma since taking the job.