Embattled Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt asked to use sirens in D.C. traffic but was told he could not because it was a non-emergency, according to CBS.
The lead agent in charge of Pruitt’s security detail who advised the administrator that sirens were only used in emergency cases was later removed and reassigned to a new job in the EPA.
Sources told CBS News that agent Pasquale “Nino” Perotta replaced Special Agent Eric Weese, who had been at the EPA for 16 years.
Perotta, now in charge of Pruitt’s unprecedented 24-hour security detail, is the agent who determined Pruitt’s need to fly first class because of threats connected to the administrator’s air travel.
EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson told CBS News in a statement, “We have no knowledge of anyone being removed from the detail for not using lights and sirens.”
When asked why Weese was reassigned, an EPA spokesman told CBS that they had “no comment on personnel matters within EPA’s protective service detail.”
This is just the latest of multiple controversies surrounding Trump’s embattled EPA administrator.
Pruitt has previously come under fire for his lavish travel expenses and regularly flying first-class on the taxpayer expense, and for circumventing the White House by giving raises to personal staffers. Pruitt has said he was unaware of the raises, but has also been criticized amid reports he rented a condo co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist at just $50 per night.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have called on Pruitt to resign this week, while some Senate conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have come to the administrator’s defense.
