Though only holding the office for just 236 days, Donald Trump’s final Secretary of the Navy, Kenneth Braithwaite, spent more than $2.3 million on air travel–averaging $10,000 per day–while he was in office, USA Today reports.
Just weeks before the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Braithwaite spent more than a quarter million dollars to travel to Wake Island, a tiny Pacific atoll where no US Navy or Marines are stationed and is under the administrative control of the US Air Force.
According to records reviewed by USA Today, Braithwaite made 22 separate domestic and foreign trips in the 34 weeks he held office, more than any other senior civilian position in the Pentagon. After taking office May 29, 2020, amid the height of the coronavirus pandemic worldwide, Braithwaite made trips to places like Norway, Italy, Greece, Japan and India.
Braithwaite also made multiple trips to Hawaii, and he charged off $24,000 to travel to the Army-Navy football game, held at West Point, New York, with his family. Braithwaite took his family on at least four trips, all domestic travel.
By comparison, according to USA Today, over the same period, then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and his successor, acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, took 15 trips. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy took 17 trips, and Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett recorded 19 trips. All of McCarthy’s trips costs a total of $900,000; his family did not accompany him on any of them.
“I am extremely proud of the record of accomplishments of Our Sailors and Marines during my tenure as Secretary, especially following such a tumultuous chapter in the Navy’s recent history of crisis following crisis as compared to our other services,” Braithwaite wrote in an email to USA Today. “I submit it’s impossible to lead men and women deployed around the world from behind a desk in Washington.”
Many of Braithwaite’s domestic trips were aboard a C-37B, the military version of a Gulfstream 550 business jet that can carry twelve passengers and has a crew of four, including cabin stewarts. Braithwaite used the aircraft to make three trips to Norfolk, Virginia, a large center for naval operations and a three-hour drive from Washington, DC. The C-37B costs approximately $8,000 per hour to operate, not including the costs associated with the crew; commercial flights between DC and Norfolk can be made for as little as $200.