Cabinet member resigns in charter flight controversy

Tom Price served as health and human services secretary.

Tom Price, President Donald Trump’s embattled health and human services secretary, resigned Friday amid sharp criticism of his extensive use of taxpayer-funded charter flights, the White House said.

T he announc e ment came shortly after Trump told reporters he considered Price a “fine man” but that he “didn’t like the optics” and planned to make a decision by the end of the day. “I’m not happy, I can tell you that. I’m not happy,” Trump said as prepared to leave the White House en route to his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

In a statement, the White House said Trump intends to designate Don J. Wright as acting secretary. Wright currently serves as the deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the Office of Disease Preven- tion and Health Promotion.

Price said Thursday that he would reimburse the government for a fraction of the

costs of his flights on char- ter planes in recent months. A Health and Human Ser

vices official said Thursday that Price would write a check for $51,887.31, which appears to cover the cost of his seats on chartered flights but not those of his staffers.

Po l itico, which first reported on Price’s repeated use of chartered jets, has esti- mated the total expense of the taxpayer-funded trips exceeded $400,000 — and it reported early Thursday evening that the cost of his White House-approved flights on military planes to Africa, Europe and Asia exceeded $500,000.

Besides the charter flight issue, Trump has also directed some of his frustration at Price over the inability of Republicans in Congress to pass a health-care- reform bill.

During a speech in July to a gathering of Boy Scouts, Trump said — jokingly at the time — that Price could lose his job if a bill didn’t pass.

“He better get the votes,” Trump said. “Otherwise I will say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’”

Outside the administration, Price has been a controversial figure since around the time of his confirmation hearings nine months ago, but it was the revelation of his high-priced transporta-

tion for his travels as sec- retary that got him in trou-

ble inside the White House. The repeated reliance on charters, including for distances as short as between Washington and Philadelphia, contrasts markedly with the travel of his two immediate predecessors during the Obama administration.

As the news prompted the HHS inspector general to begin an examination of Price’s use of chartered planes, the secretary initially said that he would suspend such trips until the inquiry was complete.

On Thursday, he amended that to say that he would no longer take such flights, issuing a statement in which he said that his private-charter travel had been approved by legal and HHS officials but that he regretted “the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars.”

The ruckus prompted by his travel habits followed complaints earlier this year by Democrats and other critics about his ethics for a separate reason: private investments he made while a House member in health-care companies that could have benefited from bills he sponsored.

At Price’s confirmation hearing in late January, the Senate Finance Committee’s senior Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon, accused him of “a conflict of interest and an abuse of position.” The main focus of such criticism involved Price’s largest stock purchase in 2016 — between $50,000 and $100,000 — in an Australian biomedical firm called Innate Immunotherapeutics.

The investment coincided with final negotiations on the sweeping 21st Century Cures bill, aimed in part at helping to accelerate clinical trials and approval of drugs like Innate’s.