Arkansas governor’s $19,000 lectern remains out of sight, but not out of mind with audit underway

By ANDREW DeMILLO
Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is trying to move past questions over a $19,000 lectern that she doesn’t even want to use right now. An audit is underway over the purchase of the lectern that’s prompted claims her office illegally altered records about it. The lectern hasn’t been seen at Sanders’ public events, and the governor’s office won’t say where it is. But questions about its cost and how its purchase was handled haven’t gone away so easily. The lectern has drawn national attention and even ridicule from a late-night comic, but the first-term Republican governor is dismissing it as a manufactured controversy.