The Treasury Department’s Inspector General is looking into a trip that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin took to Fort Knox, Kentucky that just happened to coincide with last month’s total eclipse of the sun:
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Inspector General is reviewing the flight taken by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, last week to Louisville and Fort Knox, Ky., following criticism of their use of a government plane on a trip that involved viewing the solar eclipse.
“We are reviewing the circumstances of the Secretary’s August 21 flight . . . to determine whether all applicable travel, ethics, and appropriation laws and policies were observed,” counsel Rich Delmar wrote in a statement to The Washington Post late Thursday.
“When our review is complete, we will advise the appropriate officials, in accordance with the Inspector General Act and established procedures,” Delmar added.
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Inspector General is reviewing the flight taken by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, last week to Louisville and Fort Knox, Ky., following criticism of their use of a government plane on a trip that involved viewing the solar eclipse.
“We are reviewing the circumstances of the Secretary’s August 21 flight . . . to determine whether all applicable travel, ethics, and appropriation laws and policies were observed,” counsel Rich Delmar wrote in a statement to The Washington Post late Thursday.
“When our review is complete, we will advise the appropriate officials, in accordance with the Inspector General Act and established procedures,” Delmar added.
Treasury officials have defended Mnuchin’s Kentucky visit as “official government travel” worthy of the flight aboard an Air Force jet. The one-day trip included stops at a Louisville chamber luncheon and America’s famous gold stash at Fort Knox, where Mnuchin, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and others viewed the eclipse.
“The Secretary of the Treasury at times needs to use a government aircraft to facilitate his travel schedule and to ensure uninterrupted access to secure communications,” a Treasury spokesperson said this week. “The Department of the Treasury sought and received the appropriate approval from the White House. Secretary Mnuchin has reimbursed the government for the cost of Ms. Linton’s travel in accordance with the long-standing policy regarding private citizens on military aircraft.”
The White House referred comment to the Treasury.
Treasury secretaries and other Cabinet members not involved with national security have traditionally flown on government planes only on rare occasions, including international trips, while taking commercial airlines for other domestic travels.
Cabinet officials can request government flights for specific criteria, although Department of Defense policy calls it “a premium mode of travel involving high costs and limited resources” and urges federal employees to make “every effort . . . to minimize travel cost.”
As noted, Mnuchin has justified the use of a government plane to travel to Kentucky by claiming that he was on official business, and it is apparently true that he met with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell while he was there. However, this doesn’t seem to me to be a sufficient answer to the question of why he needed to use a government jet to travel to Kentucky, or why he needed to specifically schedule a meeting with McConnell on the same day as the eclipse in an area that ‘just happened’ to be in the zone where a total eclipse would be visible. Additionally, the fact that Mnuchin brought his wife along does make this seem like more of a social visit than an official one. After all, Mnuchin and McConnell could always talk on the phone, meet at a time when they both were in Washington, or meet in Kentucky at any other time during the month of August. The fact that their meeting just happened to coincide with the eclipse and that Mnuchin, his wife, and McConnell spent at least part of the time viewing the eclipse from the roof of one of the buildings on Fort Knox belies the assertion that this was an “official” visit of any kind. At the very least, it seems clear that an investigation is warranted.
Jazz Shaw, who was among the millions of Americans who traveled to see the eclipse in person, agrees:
In conclusion, my initial suspicions about this being a second fishing expedition don’t look all that solid once you dig into the details. It may certainly turn out that this was an official business trip which will pass inspection for the costs incurred, but you can’t deny that the optics of it are bad enough to warrant a closer look. Mnuchin’s people are saying the trip was planned months in advance, but hey… so was mine. It came down to a last minute decision based on cloud cover, but Kentucky was always a top choice for many in the eastern half of the country who were hoping to witness the sun going dark.
Does that justify making him refund the cost of the trip if he was also engaged in legitimate Treasury business down there? I would assume not. But it certainly leaves the taxpayers with a rather unpleasant image.
In the end, of course, this is hardly the biggest story in Washington. If the IG finds that Mnuchin’s use of a government plane was improper in some way, then he’ll most likely simply be required to reimburse the government for the expense of his travel just like he apparently covered the expense associated with bringing his wife with him from personal funds. At the same time, though, it is a pretty apt demonstration of the extent to which the folks inside the Beltway view their jobs as sinecures from which they can profit and obtain access to luxuries that aren’t generally available to the rest of us. Millions of Americans traveled to the totality zone to view the eclipse two weeks ago, and they used their own funds to get there. Many of them took time off of work to do so, thus losing money in the process. But they did it because they wanted to be part of a once in a lifetime event, which is entirely understandable. I also don’t blame Mnuchin and his wife for wanting to be part of the event. As multi-millionaires, though, they could have easily been able to afford the cost of an airplane ticket to Kentucky or anywhere else in the totality zone. They didn’t have to use a government jet to get there, and the fact that they did is a perfect reflection of the elitism that the politically and financially powerful are so used to exercising.
I’ll leave it to the Treasury Departments IG and the appropriate government ethics officers to determine if Mnuchin ought to reimburse the government for his travel, but at the very least this doesn’t look good for appearances sake and Mnuchin and others like him ought to be more careful about who pays the bill when they’re mixing business and pleasure like this.
