RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 6 sourcesJust two other aides and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are known to have joined the president, as Secretaries of State and Treasury Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent, along with the press corps, remained on the decoy Air Force One flight out of Turkey
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President Donald Trump left his top diplomat, the head of the Treasury Department and the White House press pool to risk a grisly death from a possible Iranian missile attack while he jetted home from Turkey last month with a young female staffer who never seems to leave his side among just a small handful of passengers on the secretive flight.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the catering truck that spirited Trump away from the modified 747 he’d boarded moments earlier while returning from Turkey after this year’s NATO summit had three other passengers who joined him for the covert flight aboard a C-32A — a military version of the Boeing 757 — that was being used by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the time.
The staffers chosen to accompany the president included White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino , Director of Oval Office Operations Walt Nauta , and Natalie Harp, the 34-year-old executive assistant nicknamed Trump’s “human printer,” who had in the past attracted concerns from the Secret Service and others in his orbit for leaving notes declaring her admiration for the 80-year-old former reality TV host.
Harp’s brother, from whom she is estranged, has called her relationship with the president “unhealthy” and referred to her as Trump’s “fan club.”
She earned her “printer” nickname because she regularly provides Trump with large-format printouts of news articles and social media posts, even his own.
Scavino has worked for Trump since his teenage years when he was a golf caddy at one of the then-future president’s clubs in New Jersey, and Nauta is a former Navy culinary specialist and White House valet who followed Trump into political exile in Florida after he lost the 2020 election — where he allegedly helped Trump hide stolen classified documents that were at the center of one of the criminal cases against him.
Other cabinet members and staff, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Communications Director Stephen Cheung and a slew of other aides and staffers to the president and both cabinet officials, remained aboard the modified Boeing 747 which Trump had been seen boarding and was presumably Air Force One at the time.
They, along with the 13-member White House press pool, flew aboard that plane under the Air Force One call sign while the plane carrying Trump, Harp, Nauta, Scavino and Hegseth followed it on the short leg to RAF Mildenhall under the call sign “REACH 88,” which signifies an aircraft operated by the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command.
The presidential shell game was engineered by the Secret Service in an effort to protect Trump from what American intelligence officials have described as threats from Iranian surface-to-air missiles and a potential shoulder-fired missile targeting the president’s transporation.
The threat had previously caused Trump to ditch the new-to-him VC-25 “Bridge” aircraft that he’d been given by the Qatari government in favor of the 1990s-era Boeing because the newer plane lacks any missile defense systems.
But the decision to secretly move Trump off of the more secure, older aircraft to yet another one — and to keep the White House press pool and most of his staff in the dark — has raised questions about whether officials callously put most of Trump’s staff and reporters in harm’s way.
Even though the 747 carrying staff and journalists was used as a decoy to draw a potential attack, Trump claimed on Tuesday that he was still in greater jeopardy than those in the plane that had essentially been used as Iranian missile bait.
“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday night, breaking his silence on the issue. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for.”
When pressed on whether he’d endangered the lives of passengers on the decoy plane, he told reporters that he had merely been following the direction of the Secret Service.
“It’s really just up to Secret Service. I just follow what they like to do,” he said. “They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety. … I do what they say.”
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