Bess Levin has a Vanity Fair article about Mnuchin's use of a government jet for personal use:
The Mario & Marie Antoinette of the Trump administration
Steven Mnuchin is a very rich man. Prior to becoming Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, he was a partner at Goldman Sachs, started a hedge fund named for a spot near his house in the Hamptons, and ran OneWest, a mortgage lender that foreclosed on more than thirty thousand homeowners during Mnuchin’s tenure. Despite failing to mention about nine figures of assets on his financial disclosure forms, his net worth is estimated to be at least three hundred million dollars. So, naturally, he thought the government should provide him with a plane for his European honeymoon with new jewel-encrusted wife Louise Linton, Washington’s very own Marie Antoinette (photo, above).Rico says Trump's appointees continue to display unbelievable arrogance and stupidity...
ABC News reports that Mnuchin requested a Federal government jet for his and Linton’s getaway to France, Italy, and Scotland this summer. According to an Air Force spokesman, an Air Force jet typically costs around $25,000 an hour to operate, whereas two roundtrip tickets from DC to Paris— first class, of course— during the height of the tourist season, would set you back about half that. Shockingly, Mnuchin’s request was denied. “You don’t need a giant rulebook of government requirements to just say yourself, ‘This is common sense, it’s wrong,’” Senator Ron Wyden told ABC. “That’s just slap-your-forehead stuff.”
A senior Treasury official told ABC News that military planes, usually reserved for Cabinet members whose jobs deal directly with national security, would be used by a Treasury secretary only in “extreme” circumstances, like if the secretary needed to meet with the president immediately. A former Treasury official who worked with Jack Lew said it would have been “exceedingly rare” for Mnuchin’s predecessor to use a government plane even for official business. For private travel? “There’s not a chance in hell that Secretary Lew would have considered using military air.”
Mnuchin’s request to, essentially, make taxpayers help fund his honeymoon, comes on the heels of another aircraft imbroglio. Obviously, we are referring to the daytrip to Lexington, Kentucky, that Linton posted about on Instagram, hashtagging the many designer items she wore for the getaway, which inspired some snark from her followers and led to 2017’s least self-aware social-media meltdown. (Linton later apologized for the episode while wearing a series of ball gowns.) “Aw! Did you think this was a personal trip?! Adorable!” Linton wrote in response to a commenter who called her “deplorable” for her gaudy display of wealth while disembarking a government plane. “Did you think the US government paid for our honeymoon or personal travel?! Lololol.”
The answer, we now know, is no, but not because Mnuchin didn’t try. A spokesman for the Treasury Department confirmed that Mnuchin requested use of a government plane for his honeymoon due to “concern for maintaining a secure method of communication,” according to ABC News. “The Secretary is a member of the National Security Council and has responsibility for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence,” the spokesman said in a statement. “It is imperative that he have access to secure communications, and it is our practice to consider a wide range of options to ensure he has these capabilities during his travel, including the possible use of military aircraft.” The spokesman said that ultimately, it became “apparent that other methods for secure communication were available.”
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