EPA chief Pruitt had to fly first class after insults

Environmental Protection Agency security decided Administrator Scott Pruitt had to fly first class to protect him from an F-bomb.

Pruitt has been accosted numerous times while traveling by angry fellow travelers, a top EPA security official says – prompting the decision to place him in more luxurious first class and business acommodations while flying at taxpayer expense. 

‘He was approached in the airport numerous times, to the point of profanities being yelled at him and so forth,’ the DPA’s director of the Office of Criminal Enforcement,  Henry Barnet, told Politico.

Barnet brought up a specific incident in the Atlanta airport in October, where a person approached him with his cell phone recording, while yelling: ‘Scott Pruitt, you’re f—ing up the environment,’ those sort of terms,”‘ Barnet recalled.

The EPA did not immediately respond to questions from DailyMail.com about whether the individual was asked to stop and ceased when asked, or whether security took any action or filed a report or complaint with airport authorities after the incident.

 ‘The team leader felt that he was being placed in a situation where he was unsafe on the flight,’ said Barnet, a career official.

The decision was made to move Pruitt to the front of the plane – where passengers pay considerably more but get added legroom and other perks – to minimize a growing number of incidents.

‘We felt that based on the recommendation from the team leader, the special agent in charge, that it would be better suited to have him in business or first class, away from close proximity from those individuals who were approaching him and being extremely rude, using profanities and potential for altercations and so forth,” he told the publication.

But the seclusion came at a cost. The Washington Post reported that Pruitt and his staffers hopped a military plane from Cincinnati to New York to make a flight to Rome, at a cost to taxpayers of $36,068.50.

First Class flights and private military transport are the order of the day for Pruitt when he travels for his job, and he has a permanent waiver to steer clear of the economy cabin. Pictured is a First Class seat aboard an Emirates Airbus SE A380

UNCOMFORTABLE: The EPA said security decided to move Pruitt to first class for flights following confrontations

Pruitt has become a lightning rod for criticism for his bold and methodical efforts to roll back environmental regulations. 

EPA’s Office of Inspector General told Politico there has been an increase in threats against Pruitt, but none associated with air travel. 

Pruitt broke his silence this week, saying Tuesday that he needs First Class airline tickets to stay safe as death threats against him mount.

Now the EPA is saying it has given the agency chief pre-approval to fly in upgraded cabins all the time ‘due to security reasons,’ spokesman Jahan Wilcox told Politico.  

A giant puppet depicting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is carried among demonstrators during a People’s Climate March, to protest U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on the environment, in Washington, U.S., April 29, 2017

AT LEAST THERE IS SOMETIMES SCREEN TIME IN COACH: Passengers sitting the economy-class cabin of a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330-300 flight-number with video screens

Wilcox wouldn’t say who signed off on the permanent waiver of federal government rules that put other top officials in economy cabins. 

Pruitt burned through $90,000, spending freely on first-class airline tickets and on military jets, during just the first few weeks of June last year. 

Some of that money was spent to buy a First Class ticket on Emirates, which promises super-luxurious travel for its high rollers – including an exclusive onboard lounge. 

CBS News reports that Pruitt got to fly the expensive skies when he returned home from Italy on June 11, 2017, in seeming violation of the Fly America Act. 

Fancy a snack or a drink? Emirates’ First Class cabin includes an exclusive lounge

No cramped quarters: This is an Emirates bathroom aboard an Airbus SE A380’s First Class cabin

That law requires government-funded travel to be booked on U.S.-owned airlines. But CBS learned that someone in the EPA’s hierarchy green-lighted an exception for scheduling reasons. 

The total trip to a G-7 conference cost taxpayers more than $43,000. 

In September, EPA assistant inspector general Patrick Sullivan told CNN that Pruitt had attracted 4 to 5 times the number of death threats that plagued Obama’s last EPA chief, Gina McCarthy.

‘Unfortunately … we’ve had some incidents on travel dating back to when I first started serving in the March-April timeframe,’ Pruitt told the Manchester Union-Leader on Tuesday in New Hampshire.

‘We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment,’ he said. 

‘We’ve reached the point where there’s not much civility in the marketplace and it’s created, you know, it’s created some issues and the [security] detail, the level of protection, is determined by the level of threat.’  

EPA head Scott Pruitt tweeted out several photos from his trip to Italy, including this one where he’s sampling prosciutto and other Italian meats. The Washington Post found that Pruitt and his staffers hopped a military plane to make their flight to Rome, which cost $36,068.50

One EPA assistant inspector general says Pruitt (right) has attracted 4 to 5 times the number of death threats that plagued Obama’s last EPA chief, Gina McCarthy

In another photo from the June 2017 trip, EPA head Scott Pruitt (right) is shown rolling out pasta dough. Pruitt took a tour of the Vatican on this excursion, but left a two-day environmental meeting a day early to appear at a cabinet meeting alongside President Trump

Sullivan said last year that the EPA ‘is a lightning rod. We get threats from both sides of the spectrum.’ 

‘Some people believe the EPA is not doing enough to enforce environmental laws, and they’re upset about that. Other people think the EPA is doing too much, vis-à-vis enforcing environmental laws and they’re upset about that.’

The Washington Post, with the aid of the Environmental Integrity Project, charted the cost to taxpayers Pruitt’s travel cost in the days after yanking the United States from the Paris climate agreement. 

More broadly, the newspaper found that Pruitt’s travel was different than his predecessors at the EPA, as it was ‘secretive, costly and frequent.’ 

For example, on Thursday, June 1, President Trump made his Rose Garden announcement that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and by Monday, Pruitt was in the air. 

While just traveling between Washington, D.C. and New York City, Pruitt spent $1,641.31 on his first-class seat, which cost more than six times that of his aides, who sat in coach, the Post found.  

The administrator buzzed up to Manhattan to appear on TV twice and then stayed at an upscale hotel near Times Square, which cost taxpayers at least $433, according to the documents obtained by the Post. 

Pruitt was back in Washington on Tuesday, and then traveled with President Trump on Air Force One to Cincinnati for an infrastructure event the next day. 

Having landed back in Washington, the EPA chief and several staffers then jumped on a military plane – to the tune of $36,068.50 – to New York, in order to catch a flight to Rome.  

That flight, according to the Post, was part of a round-trip ticket that cost taxpayers $7,003.52, which was several times the price of what other officials paid, though the documents the newspaper found do not explain the discrepancy. 

While in Rome, the Post wrote, Pruitt and his entourage received a private tour of the Vatican, before heading to a Group of Seven meeting with environmental ministers in Bologna. 

Pruitt tweeted images from his visit, including ones showing him testing prosciutto and rolling out pasta dough. 

The EPA chief then left the two-day environmental summit so he could be at Trump’s side when the president called a cabinet meeting. 

That meeting made news because each of the president’s cabinet members lavished praise on the American leader, in yet another way Trump has handled the office differently than his predecessors. 

Pruitt has distinguished himself from former EPA chiefs by keeping most of his scheduled travel secret. 

The Post found that Pruitt plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and maybe Canada this year, but none of those trips have been officially announced. 

Security threats to the administrator, whose climate change stance – or lack thereof –is controversial, is the excuse Pruitt’s spokesperson Liz Bowman gives when asked about his flimsy schedule. 

Releasing the schedule, Bowman told the Post, could serve as a ‘distraction’ to Pruitt’s trips. 

And while the Post found instances of Pruitt flying coach too, his ability to fly first-class comes from the rule that government officials can do so if there’s a security threat. 

The guidelines on trips allow for a first-class ticket purchase if the flight is longer than 14 hours, if the individual has a medical concern or for ‘exceptional security circumstances’ meaning that the ‘use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.’    

With Trump’s original Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price forced to resign because of his own high-class travel, Democrats are frothing at the mouth over claims that Pruitt is abusing his government privileges too. 

Congressional Democrats have already asked the EPA’s Office of Inspector General to probe Pruitt’s travel from last year, and his expanded security detail, which often travels with the administrator too.  

The group that furnished documents to The Washington Post, the Environmental Integrity Project, continues to lob litigation at the government in order to get more Pruitt-related travel documents.

‘What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads,’ asked Eric Schaeffer, the executive director of the group, in a quote given to the Post. ‘This was all for show.’  

He also dubbed Pruitt’s decision not to release his schedule as ‘acutely paranoid.’  

‘He’s a public official,’ Schaeffer complained. ‘His schedule should be publicly known.’