A perk to being inside the Interior Secretary’s circle? Personalized tours through National Park Service sites perhaps.
According to Freedom of Information Act records, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife Lola requested VIP tours of national parks for their friends and acquaintances, the Washington Post reported Friday.
In the past 14 months, FOIA documents show the Zinkes have arranged for acquaintances and administration officials to get special tours of the Lincoln Memorial that include areas not open to the public.
Taxpayers’ money also funded a work trip to California’s Channel Islands National Park for a yacht broker who once sold Lola Zinke a boat. A Zinke aide told WaPo that the interior secretary described the yacht broker as one of three guests who were “subject matter experts” and could offer “personal testimony” about the area.
Other VIP tours included the interior secretary’s personally arranged two custom White House tours for friends affiliated with the Navy SEAL program and Lola Zinke’s “two friends from England” getting a guided tour of Joshua Tree National Park in California.
Interior spokesperson Heather Swift said in an email to WaPo Thursday that Zinke “uses his own personal time to give tours of the Lincoln Memorial to employees, reporters, and the general public several times per month because he believes the more people who experience our parks, the better.”
Welcome to Yosemite National Park Secretary Zinke, Mrs. Zinke, valued guests.
Today we’re going to take a trip into the back country, where you may see the wolves and grizzly bears that make this such a unique environment. Now, if you’ll just put on these bologna suits and climb into the radio-operated open vehicle, we’ll get going.
Once again, another glance at the conduct of Trump’s Criminal Cabinet.
Lock them all up!
What is it with these ex-Navy seals? Is it an overblown sense of entitlement? Maybe it’s not a trend yet, but Zinke and Greitens represent the worst of our military and country.
What is it with this crook?
He thinks the national parks are his personal property?
His "friends and “acquaintances” surely can pay their own way - and help support the parks instead of ripping off us taxpayers.
Just one more crook in the WH administration.
Pay it back or go to prison for fraud. We, the taxpayers, did not vote for this and we do not want to pay for this. But we sure as hell want HIM to pay for it, one way or another.
Pay up, you chiseler(s).