Zinke confirmed that he had taken three charter flights since being confirmed in March, but he did not go into detail about the events. | Getty Zinke calls travel controversy 'a little B.S.'

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke dismissed the furor around his use of private aircraft as "a little B.S." in a speech Friday at the Heritage Foundation.

Zinke spoke less than 24 hours after revelations about his use of private planes, including a $12,000 flight from an event with a big donor to his hometown and a trip in the Caribbean. He is at least the fourth member of the Trump administration to face questions over his use of private or military planes at taxpayer expense.


“All this travel was done only after department officials determined no other flights were available,” Zinke told the audience at Heritage. “Every time I travel, I submit travel plans to the department, who determines line by line that I follow the law. And I follow the law.”

Zinke confirmed that he had taken three charter flights since being confirmed in March, but he did not go into detail about the events.

In one case, he chartered a $12,375 flight from Las Vegas to an airport near his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. Commercial flights are available between the two locations, but Interior officials said none could accommodate his schedule because he was speaking at a dinner for the Las Vegas Golden Knights, a new professional hockey team owned by Bill Foley, the chairman of Fidelity National Financial and a major Zinke backer.

Employees and PACs associated with Fidelity and associated companies gave nearly $200,000 to Zinke's campaigns, according to the campaign watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics.

Democrats and environmentalists say the trip was inappropriate, especially in the wake of Zinke's comments earlier this week questioning the loyalty of nearly a third of his employees.

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“Secretary Zinke has the nerve to blow your tax dollars on easy living and then tell oil executives that a third of his own workforce isn’t loyal to the Trump administration," Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. "Loyalty to this White House means treating taxpayer money like a piggy bank. He’s the one with the ethics problems, not the employees he threw under the bus. Firing other Interior Department employees for ethical lapses is a fine step, but he needs to follow the same standards he applies to his team.”

Zinke and several other Trump cabinet members have come under fire in recent weeks for using private jets and military aircraft for official business. HHS Secretary Tom Price accrued more than $1 million in such transportation since May, saying yesterday he would personally repay a fraction of the total cost.