Tag: Trump administration abuse of taxpayer dollars

Trip to Guam at center of top Navy official’s resignation cost taxpayers over $243,000

Washington Post logoActing Navy secretary Thomas Modly boarded one of his service’s executive jets Monday to visit Guam — a trip that turned out to be costly for both him and U.S. taxpayers.

For Modly, the visit resulted in his resignation, after he created an uproar by insulting the former commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, who had raised concerns about how the Navy was handling a coronavirus outbreak on the warship.

For taxpayers, the cost of the flight alone was at least $243,151.65, according to a Navy estimate. Continue reading.

Pence family boondoggle in Ireland cost US taxpayers $600,000 for the limos alone: report

AlterNet logoVice President Mike Pence went to Poland to stand in for Donald Trump, who decided to stay behind in the U.S. for a weekend of monitoring Hurricane Dorian from his golf cart. Pence met with Polish President Andrzej Duda on behalf of Trump in an effort to build support for allowing Russia to be re-admitted to the G-7, something all the other members of the G-7 oppose because of Putin’s aggressive actions in the Crimea region of Ukraine, which he annexed for Russia.

Afterward, the Pence family, which included the vice president’s wife-mother, sister, and mother, loaded up for a trip to Ireland, where the Pence family immigrated from several generations ago. Although he was there to meet with Irish leaders and he was technically there on official United States business, Pence and his family opted to stay on the opposite side of the country, to be near the hometown of Pence’s great-great-grandpappy, which also happened to be conveniently located near the once struggling Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg. Oh, what a time they had! They saw a pub! They walked down the main street to the pub, which is owned by a distant cousin of Pence’s, with an entourage of limousines behind them, waving to the roughly half-dozen people who turned out to see them.

Now we learn that the travel back and forth from Dublin to Doonbeg, where the Pence family spent two nights at Trump’s hotel, were quite costly for American taxpayers. CREW obtained the contracts from the State Department and learned that taxpayers ponied up $599,454.36 just for the limousines used to ferry the Pence family back and forth across Ireland.

View the complete September 10 article by Jen Hayden from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

Trump Loyalist at VA Pushed Out After Being Paid to Do Little Work: WaPo

A Trump loyalist and “rising star” in the Department of Veterans Affairs was forced out last week after it became clear he was doing “little to no work” despite being on the payroll, The Washington Post reports. Secretary Robert Wilkie reportedly asked for Peter O’Rourke’s resignation on Friday after he rarely showed up to his office. In an interview with the Post, O’Rourke said he was “available for anything the secretary asked me to do” but said, “there were times I didn’t have a lot to do.”

O’Rourke reportedly led the office in charge of handling whistleblower complaints before getting bumped up to the chief of staff position and serving as the VA’s acting secretary for two months. But when Secretary Wilkie arrived, he reportedly attempted to sideline O’Rourke and pushed him into a “senior adviser to the secretary” position with a salary as high as $161,000. White House officials reportedly started getting concerned that O’Rourke was “getting paid but not working,” which went against President Trump’s vision of enforcing greater accountability at the VA. “I’d be more than happy to serve again,” O’Rourke told the newspaper, adding that he “does not hold any grudges” after his dismissal.

The White House and the VA have yet to comment on the matter.

View the post on the Daily Beast website here.

E-mails suggest Pruitt’s biggest fear was facing an open Q&A

The following article by Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times was posted on the StarTribune website May 7, 2018:

© UPI Photo

WASHINGTON – It was supposed to be a town hall meeting where Iowa ranchers could ask questions directly of Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But when the agency learned that anyone would be free to ask anything, officials decided to script the questions themselves.

“My sincere apologies,” an EPA official wrote to the rancher who would be moderating the event. “We cannot do open q&a from the crowd.” She then proposed several simple questions for him to ask Pruitt, including: “What has it been like to work with President Trump?” Continue reading “E-mails suggest Pruitt’s biggest fear was facing an open Q&A”

Rick Perry Defends Private Travel Costs at House Energy Hearing

The following article by Elvina Nawaguna was posted on the RollCall.com website October 13, 2017:

Some sites are too remote to be accessed by commercial airlines, secretary says

Energy Secretary Rick Perry testifies during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce’s Energy Subcommittee on Thursday. (Bill Clark/Roll Call)

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told lawmakers Thursday that his use of private aircraft for work travel is sometimes justified because his department’s national laboratories and some sites he has to visit are too remote to be accessed by commercial airlines.

Perry and four other administration officials are under scrutiny for exorbitant private travel at taxpayer expense.

Both Democrats and Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce’s Energy Subcommittee, where Perry was testifying Thursday about the department’s priorities, demanded that he address the allegations surrounding his travel expenses. Continue reading “Rick Perry Defends Private Travel Costs at House Energy Hearing”

Ethics Chief ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Actions by Top Federal Officials

The following article by Eric Lipton was posted on the New York Times website October 10, 2017:

WASHINGTON — The federal government’s top ethics officer sent a letter to all federal agencies late last week warning that he is “deeply concerned that the actions of some in government leadership have harmed perceptions about the importance of ethics.” He urged all federal workers to redouble their commitment to acting honorably.

The letter from David J. Apol, named acting head of the Office of Government Ethics in July by President Trump, does not include specifics about what actions by Trump administration employees have elevated his concerns. An agency spokesman declined to elaborate on Tuesday after the memo was first made public.

The two-page memo was dated Oct. 5, six days after Tom Price, the secretary of Health and Human Services, announced his resignationafter questions surfaced about his use of private and government planes, and inspectors general in at least three other agencies — Interior, Treasury and the Environmental Protection Agency — announced they were conducting their own investigations into plane travel and related issues. Continue reading “Ethics Chief ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Actions by Top Federal Officials”