--- title: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Flew on Military Planes description: U.S. taxpayers have paid just shy of $1 million to fund Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin's flights aboard military aircraft. canonical: https://time.com/5202996/mnuchin-travel-million-taxpayer/ author: Nash Jenkins article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-03-16T15:00:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T19:40:31.253Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump's Treasury Secretary Likes Flying on Military Planes. It Hasn't Been Cheap og:description: Here's how much they cost og:url: https://time.com/5202996/mnuchin-travel-million-taxpayer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6c4ece2463a5621/69892b06fb4eac18148960b3/gettyimages-929604446.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4088 og:image:height: 2300 og:image:alt: Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, speaking at og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump's Treasury Secretary Likes Flying on Military Planes. It Hasn't Been Cheap twitter:description: Here's how much they cost twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6c4ece2463a5621/69892b06fb4eac18148960b3/gettyimages-929604446.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Likes Flying on Military Planes. It Hasn't Been Cheap > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Nash Jenkins](https://time.com/author/p-nash-jenkins/) ## Nash Jenkins Mar 16, 2018 3:00 PM UTC  Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, speaking at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York City. Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, speaking at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York City. SOPA Images—LightRocket via Getty Images by [Nash Jenkins](https://time.com/author/p-nash-jenkins/) ## Nash Jenkins Mar 16, 2018 3:00 PM UTC U.S. taxpayers have paid just shy of $1 million to fund Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin’s flights aboard military aircraft, according to government documents cited by [Politico](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/15/steven-mnuchin-plane-travel-cost-421176). The documents, obtained by a watchdog group via a Freedom of Information Act request, detail a weeklong trip to the Middle East that Mnuchin took in October, to the tune of $183,646\. His previous trips had added up to a total of $811,797.81. The new documents confirm what was first reported in October — that Mnuchin had cost the government hundreds of thousands of dollars in trips aboard military aircraft, and that doing so was not illegal, at least [according to his own department](http://time.com/4972024/steven-mnuchin-planes-trump-cabinet/). The Department of the Treasury told Politico that the new report, acquired by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington “consists of falsehoods and mischaracterizations.” “Even CREW concedes that the Secretary’s travel requests ‘bear a remarkable similarity’ to the requests submitted by secretaries in the Obama Administration, using the same approval process and level of justification,” the department said in its statement. The cost of travel for members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has been a recurring theme of controversy. In late September, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price [resigned](http://time.com/4963637/tom-price-health-secretary-donald-trump-private-jet/) following reports that his private plane trips to places like China and Vietnam had cost more than $1 million. Veterans Affairs Secretary [David Shulkin](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/14/david-shulkin-europe-travel-347064), Interior Secretary [Ryan Zinke](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/zinke-pushes-back-insults-innuendo-travel-costs/story?id=53709400), Energy Secretary [Rick Perry](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/12/energy-secretary-rick-perry-defends-his-travel-aboard-private-government-planes/757776001/) and EPA head [Scott Pruitt](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/first-class-travel-distinguishes-scott-pruitts-epa-tenure/2018/02/11/5bb89afc-0b7d-11e8-8b0d-891602206fb7%5Fstory.html) have also faced criticism. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5202996/mnuchin-travel-million-taxpayer/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5202996/mnuchin-travel-million-taxpayer/"},"headline":"President Trump's Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Likes Flying on Military Planes. 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