Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson sought to reassure House lawmakers Tuesday about the decision-making that led to the purchase of a now-infamous $31,000 dining set at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

Testifying before members of the House Appropriations Committee, Carson acknowledged that his wife Candy Carson helped select a dining table for his office, but added that both he and his wife had requested lower-cost options from staff.

“A style and a color were selected by her, with the caveat that we were not happy with the pricing, and they needed to find something” with a lower price, he said.

While Carson recalled details about the old furniture set he sought to replace — he said people were stuck by nails, and a chair collapsed when somebody sat in it — he said he delegated the task out to his wife and his staff.

At the time of the purchase, Carson said the Senate had not yet confirmed a deputy secretary or any assistant secretaries to help run HUD.

“I was running from place to place, dealing with a lot of important issues. So I really wasn’t that concerned about furniture. The next thing that I quite frankly heard about it was that this $31,000 table had been bought. I said, ‘What the heck is that all about?’ I investigated, immediately had it canceled — not that we don’t need the furniture, but I thought that was excessive,” he said.

Carson’s clarifications on his and HUD’s statements on the price of dining set came about a week after the government transparency group American Oversight obtained agency emails through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and published the records on its website.

In one email, dated Aug. 29, 2017, HUD staffer Aida Rodriguez lists the total price of the secretary’s new dining set at $24,666. The documents shared by American Oversight don’t explain how the final cost reached $31,000.

“I think this a very reasonable price and the funds are available. We also have a justification for the cost (as you know, the furniture hasn’t been changed since 1988) so this should not be a problem,” Rodriguez wrote in the email.

Carson told lawmakers that his wife was not involved in any other decisions involving taxpayer funds.

While lawmakers spent a significant amount of time questioning the secretary over the cost of the dining set, the committee held the hearing to examine HUD’s budget for fiscal 2019, as outlined by President Donald Trump’s budget proposal released last month.

The president’s budget request would give HUD a $39.2 billion budget in fiscal 2019, a decrease of $8.8 billion from enacted levels, or 18.3-percent decrease from the 2017 enacted level. However, following passage of a two-year budget deal, the White House proposed giving HUD an additional $2 billion, bringing its budget to $41.2 billion.

“It makes for a wonderful story: ‘Carson wants to take down the budget, but he wants to buy this expensive furniture,’ but it bears no resemblance to the truth,” Carson said. “But we did use that opportunity to say, ‘What internal controls allowed this to happen in the first place?'”

Last December, the Senate confirmed Irving Dennis as the agency’s chief financial officer. Carson said he’s worked with his new CFO to ensure spending controls are in place.

“As far as the controls are concerned, I think there are ways that they can be enforced so that you don’t ignore them. Those are being put into place,” Carson said.

However, Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, said he remained concerned about a lack of notification to Congress about the cost of the dining set.

“The internal email traffic does indicate that your staff was aware of the notification requirements,” Price said, referring to the emails obtained by American Oversight. “They clearly were not met.”

In response, Carson said, as he understood the situation, HUD staff handled the dining set purchase such that it didn’t require congressional notification.

“As far as the reporting is concerned, it’s my understanding that the facilities people felt that the dining room table was actually dangerous, and it was a facilities issue, not a decorating issue,” Carson said.

Price also asked Carson whether Helen Foster, a former chief administrative officer at HUD, was, as she claims, demoted for raising concerns about the cost of the new furniture.

“Retaliating against staff who are attempting to get high-ranking officials to obey the law is inappropriate and possibly illegal,” Price said.

Carson said he didn’t know about Foster and denied knowledge of any retaliation against her.

“I don’t know who this whistleblower is. All of that’s news to me, quite frankly, and I would never be involved in repercussions to people like that. That’s not who I am. I don’t believe that’s an appropriate thing to do,” Carson said.

The committee also asked Carson why he allowed his son, Ben Carson, Jr., to organize an agency listening tour in Baltimore, against the advice of HUD’s ethics counsel.

“The reason he got involved in the first place is because they were having some difficulty discovering who the right people were to speak to in Baltimore. I suggested he knew just about everybody there, and that they should talk to him … HUD’s ethics counsel suggested that it might look funny for my son to be there. I discussed that with him, and left it up to him. I’m not a person who spends a lot of time thinking about how something looks. I realize that that’s not the way of Washington, and that’s a lesson that I’ve learned,” Carson said.

Carson said last month he asked the HUD inspector general to look into his family’s role and influence at the agency.

“I know that these things just linger and linger, and I know that there’s nothing there to find, so why not go ahead and get it dealt with?” Carson said.

Meanwhile, Johnson Joy, HUD’s chief information officer, suddenly resigned Tuesday after allegations of corruption surfaced around a contract for professional and staffing services.

The Guardian first reported details of Joy’s resignation.

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