The Environmental Protection Agency justified Administrator Scott Pruitt’s frequent first-class travel by claiming coach seats would “endanger his life” due to “lashing out” from passengers.
Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, who led Pruitt’s 24/7 personal security detail before retiring last week, wrote in an 87-word memo, dated May 1, 2017, and obtained by the Washington Post, that the EPA used the reasoning to explain dozens of first-class flights for the embattled administrator.
Perrotta wrote that Pruitt’s security team had observed “at times lashing out from passengers which occurs while the Administrator is seated in coach with [his personal security detail] not easily accessible to him due to uncontrolled full flights.”
Sitting in first class, Perrotta said, would better control the flying environment for Pruitt.
“We believe that the continued use of coach seats for the Administrator would endanger his life,” Perrotta wrote, “and therefore respectfully ask that he be placed in either business or first class accommodations.”
Agency officials approved the request.
The memo is one of 1,700 pages of documents the EPA provided to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the request of Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.
Gowdy first requested information from the EPA on Feb. 20 regarding how Pruitt has been able to obtain exceptions from federal rules to travel in first class.
The committee interviewed Perrotta last week as part of its investigation into Pruitt’s spending and ethics.
Pruitt is at the center of several federal probes into his spending, which has involved about $3 million spent on his security, including travel and overtime pay for Pruitt’s detail, much of it approved by Perrotta.
The EPA has said it submits a security-related request for Pruitt to fly first class before each trip because of “unprecedented” threats from travelers.
The federal General Services Administration requires agencies’ oversight staff to approve first-class travel “on a trip-by-trip basis … unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need.”
“Blanket authorization of other than coach-class transportation accommodations is prohibited and shall be authorized on an individual trip-by-trip basis, unless the traveler has an up-to-date documented disability or special need,” the policy states.
Previous documents the EPA submitted to the oversight committee showed Pruitt spent more than $105,000 on first-class travel in his first year. That includes a $16,217 flight to Morocco in December to promote natural gas, which is not part of the EPA’s purview, and a $7,003 ticket to Italy.
Pruitt has said he is now flying coach more often, in response to criticism.
Pruitt is the subject of 11 federal investigations, for his spending, ethics, living arrangements, and travel. The Morocco trip is being investigated by Congress and the EPA’s inspector general.
Amanda Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Gowdy, told the Washington Examiner Monday the oversight panel is “sorting through” and “trying to understand” the documents it has received from the EPA. Last month, Gowdy complained the EPA had failed to produce all the materials he requested relating to Pruitt’s travel.
The EPA says it is complying with the committee’s probe.
“We are working diligently with Chairman Gowdy and are in full cooperation in providing the committee with the necessary documents, travel vouchers, receipts and witnesses to his inquiries,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement to the Washington Examiner Monday.
