Betsy DeVos’s Security Detail To Cost Taxpayers Nearly $8 Million In 2019

by Katherine HugginsOctober 5, 2019, 11:40 amDaily Digest, News, News Feed >

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos‘s security detail cost $6.24 million in the 2019 fiscal year. The cost of her security detail is projected to jump to $7.87 million from now through the end of September 2020, according to Politico.

For the 2019 fiscal year, DeVos’s security deal had been projected to cost $7.74 million, but ended up costing $1.5 million less than expected. Her security cost was also $550,000 less expensive than during the 2018 fiscal year.

The U.S. Marshals Service began providing a protection detail for DeVos in February 2017, after an order from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. According to an official statement, the service “regularly conducts threat assessments on Ms. DeVos to determine threats to the secretary’s safety.”

The past four Education secretaries before her have all been protected by the Education Department’s own small security force, not a personal security detail.

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The Marshals Service would not disclose the number of personnel assigned to protect DeVos, but said the number of employees on her security detail is “commensurate with the existing threat and based on USMS protective service requirements, experience and methodology.”

DeVos’s salary as Education Secretary is $199,700 annually. Her security detail is expected to cost just over $650,000 per month.

With an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion, she is the richest member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

When she was confirmed in January 2017, DeVos said she wanted her salary to be $1. She has instead been donating her nearly $200,000 salary to non-profit, education-related organizations.

In 2018, she split her salary among the Special Olympics, Kids Hope USA, a group focused on church-designed mentoring programs for at-risk children in public schools, Vision to Learn, an organization that provides free glasses to low-income children, and Dreams Soar, a nonprofit that encourages girls to pursue careers in the fields of STEM and aviation.

In 2019, she donated part of her salary to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a group of public historically black colleges and universities.

She split the rest of the salary between the Travis Manion Foundation, a nonprofit supporting veterans, The Kennedy Center’s Any Given Child initiative, The National Academy Foundation, which supports STEM education, The Children’s Scholarship Fund, a school choice group, Jesse Lewis Choose Love, a social-emotional learning program and The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation.