October 6, 2017

Treasury Secretary Has Spent Nearly $1 Million on Military Flights

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The Treasury Department’s Inspector General has concluded that Steven Mnuchin’s frequent use of military travel violated no laws. However:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has flown on military aircraft seven times since March at a cost of more than $800,000, including a $15,000 round-trip flight to New York to meet with President Trump at Trump Tower, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General.

….Mr. Mnuchin has made nine requests for military aircraft since assuming his position earlier this year and has taken seven flights….Treasury secretaries generally take commercial flights except in extenuating circumstances because of the exorbitant costs of using military planes.

Apparently Mnuchin routinely requests military flights just in case he has a pressing need to conduct classified phone calls. Which is totally reasonable. Commercial flights from DC to New York, for example, can take as long as an hour, and who knows what might happen if the Treasury Secretary were out of touch that long when he was needed for an emergency 25th Amendment call?

Also: that flight to Fort Knox to see the eclipse had nothing to do with the eclipse. So everyone should stop saying that it did.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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