When President Trump sneaked out of Turkey last month in a clandestine operation, he brought a select few with him on the secret flight.
The White House aides Natalie Harp, Dan Scavino and Walt Nauta, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were all traveling with the president on a military jet, a U.S. official said.
Two cabinet members, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, left the country on the decoy flight, which was an older model of Air Force One, the U.S. official and a second official said. That plane carried other aides who had been attending the NATO summit in Ankara, along with journalists.
Mr. Trump had said he would be taking the older plane “for old time’s sake” for the first leg of the trip home, from Turkey to Britain.
But the reality was that U.S. officials had determined there was a credible threat to Air Force One. So Mr. Trump boarded the decoy Air Force One in front of the cameras, then sneaked out in a catering container elevated on a hydraulic lift.
Joining him on the other plane were Ms. Harp, his ever-present aide; Mr. Nauta, his longtime “body man” who now is the head of Oval Office operations; and Mr. Scavino, a deputy White House chief of staff and head of presidential personnel, who has also handled Mr. Trump’s social media for years.
Those names were reported earlier by CBS News.
Unlike Mr. Trump and the other passengers, Mr. Hegseth was seen publicly boarding the military jet, which apparently was part of the deception plan.
The reporters traveling on the older Air Force One were instructed to lower their window shades, without an explanation given; in hindsight, it kept them from catching a glimpse of Mr. Trump leaving the plane.
In addition to Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bessent, several senior White House and administration officials were on the older, decoy plane, according to one of the U.S. officials.
They included the top policy adviser Stephen Miller; the White House communications director, Steven Cheung; the staff secretary, Will Scharf; the deputy national security adviser, Michael Needham,; the deputy chief of staff Richard Walters; the aide Christopher Ambrosini; and staff members from the White House advance team, the official said.
A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment and asking for a full accounting of who was on the plane.
