Treasury Secretary Asked for Government Jet for Honeymoon
BALDWIN: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin blurring the lines between pleasure and business. Again, the Treasury Department says while planning his European honeymoon over this past summer, Mnuchin asked the White House if he and his wife could use a government jet. Mnuchin said he wanted the jet so that he could have secure lines of communication while he was abroad. He later withdrew that request. And now these investigators are telling CNN that they will be reviewing all of Mnuchin's government-related travel requests, because this isn't the first time he and his wife's travel have, shall we say, raised some eyebrows. Let's talk this over with CNN contributor Larry Noble. He is general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. And also with me, CNN White House reporter Kate Bennett. So, good to see both of you. And, Larry, just again, to be clear, Mnuchin never actually followed through with getting this jet. Nevertheless, the request was apparently made. How brazen would this sort of a request have been vs. his excuse that he wanted a secure coms line?</s>LARRY NOBLE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's pretty brazen. They're only supposed to use the military jets when it's absolutely necessary, and the fact that the answer came back that we have other ways to have secure communications shows that, you know, this wasn't a serious -- a really serious effort to protect the government interests. What this was, was an effort to use a private government jet, an Air Force jet, to go on his honeymoon. You know, one of the ironies of this is that his wife got into an Instagram battle with somebody else and made a comment saying, I bet you think that the government paid for our honeymoon or travel, laugh out loud, laugh out loud. Now it's apparent that she said that because she already knew the government had rejected their request for that travel. It's a pretty brazen attempt. And it fits into other things they have done, such as the question why they went to Kentucky during the eclipse.</s>BALDWIN: Right. Right. Right.</s>NOBLE: It seems to be looking at the government resources as something they can use for their own benefit.</s>BALDWIN: On some of that, Kate Bennett, you have new reporting on some of this Mnuchin stuff. What are you learning?</s>KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, you know, the point here is, what we don't know is Louise Linton. We don't know her very well. We don't know Mnuchin very well. But we do know that she likes luxury things. She enjoys -- she did a story for "Town & Country" right before her wedding detailing the diamonds she planned to wear before the ceremony. This is a woman who felt comfortable tagging the thousands and thousands of dollars that she was wearing in designer clothes. She's an actress. She runs a production company. The couple has recently moved to a large home in Washington that she's apparently integrating herself within the social scene here. You know, this optics wise is not great timing. Her husband is now part of the government. He's working on tax reform, of all things. So there's sort of this brazen contradiction between what has happened now twice in terms of making headlines and what his real day job is.</s>BALDWIN: But, so, to Kate's point, Larry, you know, when you look at the full picture, and you alluded to the Fort Knox/Eclipse/Kentucky trip, right, in the government jet, and this request for this European honeymoon and a government jet, and the whole wife tagging fancy, fancy designers and it just begs the question, is the man tone-deaf?</s>NOBLE: At the very least, he's tone-deaf. I think what you're seeing here is a very different view of the world than most Americans have or are capable of having. It's a view of the world that you take what you can get, that these services are there for me and I will use them, you know, regardless of what the actual rules are, and regardless of who's paying for them. I have to say that the tone for this administration is set at the very top. There seems to be just this idea that it's not a question of what we should do, it's not a question of what norms are, it's not even a question of what the law is. It's a question of what we can get away with. And so, you know, it's the whole thing of, well, I can ask, I can try, if I don't get caught, I get away with it. I think it's the whole tone of the administration that it's tone-deaf to how average Americans live and it's tone-deaf to what the ethics rules are and what they're about. And I think we're going to see this continue to happen unless they have a real change of heart about what their role in government is.</s>BALDWIN: Well, as we have been reporting, there is now an internal investigation over this honeymoon jet request. We will stay on it. Larry Noble, thank you. Kate Bennett, nice to see you. Coming up next, we do have breaking news now involving the president talking to reporters on board Air Force One as he's making his way back to Washington, made news on a variety of topics, including what we were just discussing. Stand by for that next.