Washington: Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has quit the Trump Cabinet over his use of private charter flights on official business at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars, according to the BBC and Guardian.
Price has resigned after revelations that he spent hundreds of thousands of tax payers' dollars on chartered flights.
The White House said in a statement Price offered his resignation on Friday and Trump accepted it.
Trump had teased the announcement earlier in the day when he told reporters: "I'll be announcing something in the very near future."
"He's a very fine man," Trump said of Price, not long before his resignation was announced. "I certainly don't like the optics. I'm not happy, I can tell you that. I'm not happy."
Don Wright, the deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the office of disease prevention and health promotion, will serve as acting secretary starting on Saturday.
Distraction
The Los Angeles Times earlier repoted that Trump had been telling associates that his health chief has become a distraction, overshadowing his agenda and undermining his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Price was trying to hang on to his job Friday amid continuing questions over his use of private charter flights on official business at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
Other cabinet secretaries scrambled to explain their own charter flights, and a House committee pressed ahead with a government-wide travel investigation.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke dismissed the controversy over charter flights as "a little BS over travel," but he said taxpayers do have the right to know official travel costs.
Price had offered public regrets and a partial repayment Thursday, but that didn't seem to calm the furor, particularly in the White House.
Trump is deeply frustrated with Price and has grown increasingly annoyed by the stream of reports about the health secretary's expensive air travel, according to three people familiar with Trump's private discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
