Following reports of an apparent investigation by the House Oversight Committee into the alleged use of private planes paid for by taxpayers, several members of President Trump’s cabinet are in hot water. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos quickly insisted she was paying for her own airfare, but neither Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price nor Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been as lucky. Especially the former, for when reporters asked the president whether or not he was considering firing Price because of the scandal, Trump simply replied, “We’ll see.”
“I was looking into it and I will look into it. And I will tell you personally, I’m not happy about it,” the president told reporters early Wednesday afternoon. Though he did acknowledge the question regarding Price’s potential determination, Trump never explicitly said he was actually considering it. Even so, he repeated that he was “not happy about it,” and he told the press that he was “going to look at it” himself. “I am not happy about it, and I let him know it,” he concluded.
Price, who appeared on CNBC in 2009 to decry his fellow congresspeople’s use of private jets for official travel, was caught doing the same by Politico. Specifically, the report revealed the HHS secretary had booked private airfare at least 26 times since last May. In a statement, the department insisted that Price had not violated federal law since chartered travel is allowed when “no scheduled commercial airline service is reasonably available.” However, Politico determined that viable commercial options were available for many of the secretary’s routes at the time.
UPDATE #1 – 3:00pm EST: House Democrats are now calling for Price to resign over these reports of his private jet use.
(Via Politico)