Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is under the gun after multiple reports have suggested his lack of regard for the strict ethical boundaries that exist as a public official.
Initially, it was reported earlier this year that Pruitt regularly purchased first-class airline seats for himself and his security team with taxpayer money, citing “specific ongoing threats associated with Administrator Pruitt’s travel.” In his first year, according to Politico, Pruitt spent $105,000 on first-class seats and an extra $58,000 on charter flights and a military aircraft carrying him and his team.
Then, it was discovered in March, through reports, that Pruitt was leasing a condo owned by the wife of a lobbyist whose client list includes energy concerns.
On Thursday, CBS News reported that Pruitt asked to use sirens in D.C. traffic for a nonemergency use because he was running late to a meeting. The lead agent in charge of Pruitt’s security detail, who denied his request to use the sirens, was reassigned to a new job within the EPA less than two weeks later.
Just today, we got a story that Pruitt demoted staffers who questioned his spending.
While Pruitt, at the moment, has the support of President Trump, let’s be real, that support can be ephemeral. Trump has fired Cabinet members for, arguably, much less. Does the name Tom Price ring a bell?
Even though, for instance, the siren story has no smoking gun — perhaps there’s no connection between the agent denying Pruitt a siren and the agent getting reassigned — there’s too much of a pattern of Pruitt at least blurring the lines.
Conservatives have generally been pleased by Pruitt’s success in rolling back unnecessary costly regulations and reducing the impact of bad policies like the ethanol mandate. But the appearance of lackadaisical ethics undermines these ends by attaching Pruitt’s good policies to his unseemly actions.
