The Hill News

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) wants President Obama to give back the royalties on books purchased by the State Department, he said Tuesday.

“Imagine you're in a foreign country, you're visiting a foreign embassy, they hand you a very political book written by the president and you realize the president's getting royalties on. It just, symbolically but also even mechanically, it doesn't seem right,” Schweikert said on Fox News. “This is one of those occasions where, on the scale of what's going on in Greece and Afghanistan, it may be very small, but the symbolism's pretty powerful.”

Schweikert is following up on a report by the Washington Times from late October that found the State Department bought more than $70,! 000 worth of books authored by Obama. Embassies used the books as gratuity gifts and also to stock libraries in various countries. The largest single buy was by the U.S. Embassy in Egypt, which spent $28,636 for copies of Obama’s 2004 memoir Dreams From My Father.

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