Both Republicans and Democrats have criticized EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt over spending items which, while not especially large, are definitely questionable. Today, Pruitt faced serious questions about his spending, ethics, and travel decisions during the first of two back-to-back congressional hearings.
Pruitt has performed pretty well in his House hearing so far. But here’s a quick catalog of the scandals that members of Congress – mostly Democrats – threw in his face today.
The phone booth
Pruitt values privacy, and the EPA spent roughly $43,000 building him a soundproof phone booth.
When the Washington Post first reported the unusual expenditure, agency spokeswoman Liz Bowman said the cone of silence was necessary to prevent hacking and eavesdropping. “This is something which a number, if not all, Cabinet offices have,” Bowman said, “and E.P.A. needs to have updated.” Pruitt maintained under questioning that although he had asked staff to address the secure communications issue, the decision to make such a large expenditure had been taken by career staff all on their own.
There are two reasons this has been such a big problem for him. First, a secure room already existed, according to Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA Administrator from 2001 to 2003, as she said in an interview with the New Yorker. Second, the independent Government Accountability Office charged that the EPA violated the law when installing the phone booth because the agency did not notify Congress, as required by law, before spending more than $5,000 on office equipment.
The sirens
Every little kid dreams of turning on the sirens in a cop car. For Pruitt that dream became a reality a couple weeks after taking office. Stuck in traffic and running late, the administrator ordered his security detail to use his vehicle’s lights and sirens to cut through the gridlock.
An agent explained the sirens were for emergency use only, CBS News reports. Lights flashed anyway. The agent was later removed from Pruitt’s detail and was reassigned inside the EPA.
Unfortunately, it happened more than once. The New York Times reports that Pruitt’s vehicle used the lights and the sirens during trips to the airport and also at least once on the way to dinner at Le Diplomate, a trendy little French restaurant that doesn’t hold reservations for tardy patrons (even apparently for Cabinet members).
A spokesman for the agency, Jahan Wilcox, insisted that Pruitt didn’t decide when to flash the lights and that “the security detail for the past 15 years has used them in very limited fashion.” This actually didn’t come up today, at least not during the first few hours of the EPA House budget hearing.
The flights
A Washington Post investigation revealed that when Pruitt hopped a jet from Washington, D.C. to New York City, he flew first class and he billed the taxpayer $1,641 for the flight. He also took first class flights overseas, military planes, and charter planes. The Post estimated in February that Pruitt had spent hundreds of thousands on flights up to that point. And last December, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., sent a letter to the EPA administrator to ask about a trip to Morocco that cost upwards of $40,000.
The EPA maintains that the flights are above board and notes that security concerns (including explicit threats that Pruitt read to members of Congress during today’s hearing) prompted Pruitt to fly first class. But that hasn’t stopped the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee from asking for Pruitt’s receipts. Today, Pruitt noted that he has changed his ways and now flies coach.
The security detail
Again, Pruitt has experienced a number of death threats, an unfortunate and unusual job hazard for the EPA chief. He wanted 24/7 security, and he pulled in agents from EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division into his detail. Pruitt wanted and hired a crack chief of security, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta, who worked previously as a Secret Service agent and who operates a private security company on the side.
This led to an incident in which the EPA contracted with Italian security to add more guards to Pruitt’s detail while overseas. It also led to a private security team running a sweep for bugs inside the administrator’s office. In addition, $9,000 worth of biometric locks were installed on doors inside the agency. The Associated Press estimated that the cost of this security ran a cool $3 million.
No one can fault Pruitt for wanting to keep himself and his family safe. But did he exaggerate the threat? He claimed during today’s hearing that he hasn’t. But an internal memo from the EPA’s Office of Homeland Security Intelligence Team found that, “[u]sing all source intelligence resources, EPA Intelligence has not identified any specific credible direct threat to the EPA Administrator.”
The sleeping arrangement
When not traveling and when not home in Oklahoma, Pruitt rented a Washington, D.C. condominium by the night. It cost him a seemingly quite low $50-per-night. And Pruitt’s landlord was the wife of an energy lobbyist.
Pruitt says he doesn’t inhabit the condo, but rather crashes in it on certain nights as if it were a hotel room. But he is estimated to have spent $6,100 on rent over a six-month period (a very low amount for D.C.), and during that same six-month period the EPA approved plans for a cross-border oil pipeline by Enbridge Energy, a company represented by Pruitt’s landlord’s husband’s high-priced lobbying firm, Williams & Jensen.
EPA spokesmen said that the arrangement complied with all ethics requirements, and Pruitt testified today that EPA ethics officials signed off on his arrangement. During an interview with the Daily Signal, Pruitt insisted that his landlord never lobbied the EPA, but FEC records provide evidence to the contrary.
The conclusion
Pruitt has been one of President Trump’s most stalwart Cabinet members when it comes to policy. He has fearlessly and tirelessly deregulated and reorganized bureaucracy, to the delight of the administration and energy businessman alike. But those policy victories could be sullied by the numerous personal scandals. His fate could rest on how well today’s and tomorrow’s committee hearings go.
