Jill Biden's Flights to Paris Leave Taxpayers with Huge Bill, Charging Them Over $300k
It appears that first lady Jill Biden has handed U.S. taxpayers a bill for nearly $350,000 for her flights from Delaware to France and back again so she could go from the D-Day commemoration back to the U.S. to be by Hunter Biden’s side for a day during his latest court case.
Hunter Biden’s trial over his allegedly illegal purchase of a gun was going on in Delaware at the same time as the D-Day memorial services in France, and “Doctor” Jill wanted to split her time attending both.
Unfortunately, it appears that American taxpayers are footing the bill for the flights to and fro and to again, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
Jill Biden is billing the U.S. government for the $345,400 in flights, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation estimated, according to the newspaper.
Fox News estimated that the cost could be even higher since the government plane the first lady usually flies in is usually rated at $200,000 per flight hour.
The Democratic Party is picking up a little bit of the tab and will pay what the flight would have cost if Biden had flown commercially. But taxpayers will pick up the rest.
“In accordance with relevant regulations utilized across administrations, the government is reimbursed the value of a first-class fare for these flights to Wilmington and back to Paris,” the first lady’s office told the Daily Mail.
The White House would not divulge the exact costs of the flights.
The costs of the flights reported did not estimate the costs for Biden’s staffers, White House aides, or various Secret Service personnel.
Some idea of the cost could be calculated by the $6,655 costs from Philadelphia to Paris at the time of Biden’s flight, according to the Daily Mail.
Jill Biden flew to Paris from Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday. Then flew back to Wilmington the following day to attend court to show her support for Hunter at his trial. Then, on Friday, she flew back to Paris so she could make appearances with her husband at events commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France during World War II.
The White House Military Office is the entity that calculates the flight costs and then reports that fee to the relevant agencies and organizations.
First ladies usually travel on a Boeing C-32. The Air Force calculates the reimbursable rate for C-32 flights at $13,816 per hour, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation told the Daily Mail.
TravelMath.com calculates that each leg of a trip from Wilmington to Delaware would cost an average person $110,528. With her many flights last week, the Daily Mail put her costs at around $345,400.
President Biden caught heavy criticism for his speech delivered at the D-Day memorial event. He was castigated for bragging about Russian casualties with the country’s invasion of Ukraine, and for “plagiarizing” Ronald Reagan’s famed “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” speech on the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984.
Biden was also criticized for making D-Day seem like an “afterthought” in how he treated the June 6 commemoration day.
The cost of Jill Biden’s desire to be in both places in the space of days is more than five times the average U.S. annual salary.
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