U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder billed the taxpayers more than $4 million in travel costs for trips during President Obama’s first term in office, documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act revealed.
The travel included 213 separate trips, made between March 2009 and August 2012, The Daily Mail reported. All were paid by taxpayer dollars — including some that were personal in nature.
The attorney general flies on a $53.5 million Gulfstream V jet.
Judicial Watch, which made the FOIA request for documents on Mr. Holder’s travel, released the information Monday. Among the revelations: Mr. Holder billed taxpayers more than $113,000 for four trips he made to address advocacy groups with a liberal political bent, The Daily Mail reported.
His first trip in 2009 was to a U.S.-Mexico Arms Trafficking Strategy Meeting, during which Mr. Holder said he was “committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner,” the precursor to Operation Fast & Furious, the documents showed, The Daily Mail reported.
The memo is notable in that Mr. Holder later told Congress he didn’t know anything about Fast & Furious tactics, later writing in a letter that “prior to early 2011,” he had “no recollection of knowing about Fast and Furious,” The Daily Mail reported.
A sampling of Mr. Holder’s other trips: Personal travels to Atlantic City, Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Savannah, Martha’s Vinehard and Farmingdale, N.Y., The Daily Mail reported.
Most of the travel expenses were for meetings and events — but some included bills for travel tied to commencement speeches at universities with endowments that reached the billions of dollars, the documents showed.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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