Members of Trump's supposedly anti-elitist regime apparently love taking tax-payer funded trips to ski resorts, don't they?
Before he resigned, we learned that former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price charted a taxpayer-funded jet to attend the Aspen Ideas conference and now we learn that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke took a taxpayer-funded trip to a ski resort in Montana.
In the first of the newly disclosed appearances, Zinke attended a mid-March fundraiser at a ski resort in Big Sky, Montana, organized by committees affiliated with Republican Sen. Steve Daines, according to two attendees who saw him there. And in May, Zinke briefly stopped by a fundraiser for GOP Rep. Don Young at a steakhouse in Anchorage, Alaska, a spokesman for Young's campaign told POLITICO.
All three fundraisers occurred on trips that Zinke took for official Interior Department business. The Hatch Act and other federal laws allow Cabinet secretaries to participate in partisan political activities only if they do so on their own time and do not use any governmental resources.
Politico previously reported that Zinke took a taxpayer-funded trip to the island of St. Croix to raise money for the local Virgin Islands GOP.
The Interior Department has not been reimbursed by Zinke for any of these trips, at least not yet, so as of today they appear to be illegal.