In undisclosed trip, Trump’s Treasury breaks with precedent on transparency

By Damian Paletta February 27 at 2:45 PM

The French government on Tuesday announced U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would meet with French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris and hold a press conference with finance minister Bruno Le Maire.

It marked a major diplomatic excursion for the public official whose signature is stamped on American currency. But the Treasury Department had never announced that Mnuchin was even leaving the country. On Friday, when Treasury revealed its public engagements for this week, it suggested Mnuchin wouldn’t make a single one.

“It’s both unusual and seemed unnecessary” for Treasury not to disclose such a trip, said Phillip Swagel, who was a senior Treasury official during the George W. Bush administration.

He said the idea of Mnuchin going to Europe “seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” but he couldn’t explain why Treasury didn’t announce it beforehand. Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joseph Biden, called the lack of disclosure “unprecedented given my historical knowledge.”

Mnuchin’s trip, parts of which he has now chronicled on social media, is the latest in a string of events that show he is continuing to do things his own way, at times avoiding public scrutiny even if that has traditionally been part of the job.

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