We know Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been jetting off to eclipse watch parties and requested a $25,000 per hour taxpayer-funded jet for his European honeymoon (request denied). We know Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has used taxpayer-funded private jets at least 24 times, something none of his predecessors did, and Price’s trips itinerary included a trip to a retreat in Aspen, where he got his marching orders from the billionaire Koch brothers to repeal Obamacare or else they’ll quit pumping money into the Republican party.
Given the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of private taxpayer-funded jets stands to reason that the travel records of all Trump’s cabinet members would be subject to scrutiny. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) organization submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the public travel records of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and they got a surprising reply. They are stonewalling the release of the Carson’s travel records, rebuffing the FOIA request by claiming CREW’s request for a fee reduction or waiver for the records is “not in the public interest.” HUD sent their first letter rejecting the request on August 31 and again rejected the request a month later.
The full letter is below.
Something tells me CREW isn’t going to let this one go and simply move on. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realize the taxpayer-funded travel records of a government official are, in fact, in the public interest.