WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Saturday swung back at recent media reports about his costly use of government helicopters, calling them “total fabrications and a wild departure from reality.”In a post to Twitter, Zinke offered what he called “facts the DC media refuses to print.” His use of helicopters, he explained in an accompanying statement, included conducting aerial surveys “of a million acres of federal monument lands” and “of a power line project, which was under scrutiny for possible compensatory mitigation corruption from the previous administration.” A third helicopter trip, he said, was for “a national command authority directed emergency response exercise.”All of the trips — presumably including the round-trip flight the ensured he made it home in time for an afternoon of horseback riding with Vice President Mike Pence, as Politico first reported — were “thoroughly vetted and scrutinized before being approved” by the Interior Department’s ethics officers, he said. “Since I took the helm at Interior, the Office of the Secretary reduced the annual cost of noncommercial airfare compared to the previous two secretaries and we will continue to use government resources efficiently,” Zinke said in his statement.

Source: Huffington Post December 10, 2017 00:00 UTC