When news broke of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining set, he denied having even known about it, blamed the furniture’s purchase on career staffers, and said he would have preferred used furniture. You knew that wasn’t going to hold up, right? Yeah. And there are emails:
An August email from a career administration staffer, with the subject line "Secretary's dining room set needed," to Carson's assistant refers to "printouts of the furniture the Secretary and Mrs. Carson picked out." [...]
Confronted Tuesday with the discrepancy between his past comments and the internal emails, Williams offered only this explanation: "When presented with options by professional staff, Mrs. Carson participated in the selection of specific styles."
They didn’t know anything about it, except for how they chose it. And once again, it’s all the fault of career staffers, with no mention of the staffer who has said she was demoted for pushing back against expensive redecoration of Carson’s office.
On top of that, Carson had claimed that the existing furniture needed to be replaced because he had been told it was “beyond repair” when the emails show that HUD had gotten an estimate to have the old chairs repaired.
In short, grifting topped off with lies, lies and also lies. And par for the Trump cabinet course.
