On Thursday, the Treasury Department inspector general found that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's seven flights on military planes were all legally approved by the White House but suggested that the $811,798 cost to taxpayers was poorly justified by repeated use of an inadequate "single boilerplate statement" about "scheduling, logistics, and communications needs." "Just because something is legal doesn't make it right," wrote IG counsel Rich Delmar, who investigated the nine military fights Mnuchin has requested, including the withdrawn request for his European honeymoon and a trip to the Middle East later this month.
Mnuchin's travels on government aircraft include a round trip from Washington, D.C., to New York to meet with President Trump at Trump Tower ($15,112), the infamous trip to Kentucky with his wife during the solar eclipse ($26,900), a C-32 jet to Italy for the G-7 summit ($314,442), and a $43,726 flight to Miami with Mexico's finance minister that the Treasury Department's travel office pointedly noted at the time would cost $688 round-trip commercial. "Treasury secretaries generally take commercial flights except in extenuating circumstances because of the exorbitant costs of using military planes," The New York Times notes.
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