Ben Carson's $31,000 Dining Set — GAO Confirmed Illegal
HUD Secretary Ben Carson's office spent $31,561 on a custom mahogany dining set — exceeding the $5,000 legal limit by 6x. Internal emails showed the Carsons personally picked the furniture. The GAO confirmed it broke federal law.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson's office spent $31,561 on a custom mahogany dining set — a table, 10 chairs, a sideboard, and a hutch — for his office suite. This exceeded the $5,000 legal limit for office redecoration without Congressional approval by more than sixfold.
The agency initially claimed Carson was uninvolved in the selection. Internal emails contradicted this, showing "printouts of the furniture the Secretary and Mrs. Carson picked out." A whistleblower, Helen Foster, alleged she was demoted in retaliation for refusing to find additional funding for the redecoration.
The Government Accountability Office confirmed that HUD violated the Antideficiency Act — a federal law prohibiting agencies from spending money in excess of their appropriations. Carson cancelled the order only after media coverage.
The $31,000 dining set became a symbol of the disconnect between the Trump administration's rhetoric about cutting government waste and its officials' actual behavior — the secretary of the department responsible for housing the poor spending six times the legal limit on personal office furniture.