Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt might be history’s most expensively protected bureaucrat.
The scandal-plagued Trump Cabinet official has now burned through more than $4.6 million in taxpayer money on security expenses.
Records obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom Of Information Act demand show a range of outlays from gun holsters to vehicle rentals.
But in April the EPA also spent $2,750 on ‘tactical pants’ and ‘tactical polos’ for Pruitt’s guards. It also bought a tactical kit whose putpose is to break down doors.
That could leave voters with the impression that the government’s top environmental enforcer is surrounded by a small personal army.
Between his own agency’s inspector general and at least two congressional committees, Pruitt faces more than a dozen government inquiries over his conduct in office.
EMbattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s security expenses are more than triple those of his predecessor, and some of the line-items include thousands of dollars on ‘tactical’ pants and polo shirts, along with a police kit for breaking down doors
President Trump says Pruitt ‘has done a fantastic job at EPA but a Republican Senate aide thinks the scandal-dam will burst at some point
President Trump has steadfastly defended his job performance, but has recently become critical of the baggage his behavior has heaped onto the administration.
‘Scott has done a fantastic job at EPA,’ Trump told reporters last Friday, ‘but, you know … I’m not happy about certain things, I’ll be honest.’
‘He’s done a fantastic job running the EPA,’ the president reiterated, ‘which is very overriding.’
House Democrats have formally requested that a Justice Department investigation of Pruitt for potential criminal conduct.
In a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray and Justice criminal division chief John Cronan, six liberal lawmakers with oversight of Pruitt’s agency alleged he repeatedly violated federal anti-corruption laws by seeking to leverage his government position for personal gain.
The latest budget documents released by the EPA under the Freedom Of Information Act law show spending on everything from a door-breaching kit to ‘tactical polo shirts’ and a shotgun case
They cited Pruitt’s $50-a-night lease of a Capitol Hill condo tied to a lobbyist seeking to influence his agency, directing an EPA aide to contact a senior Chick-fil-A executive as part of an effort to land his family a franchise, and a $2,000 payment to his wife from organizers of a conference the administrator then attended at taxpayer expense.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are getting especially tired of how Pruitt treats the nation’s checkbook, according to a Republican Senate aide who spoke with DailyMail.com on Thursday.
‘At some point everyone’s patience is going to run out,’ the aide said. ‘Either that or leadership going to get the president to throw him overboard as a condition of something he wants from us.’
Among Pruitt’s other transgressions: He used an aide to help him shop for a used mattress at Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel and abused his privileges at the private West Wing dining room at the White House.
And his expensive security detail was pressed into service to find his favorite moisturizing lotion at Washington-area hotels.
Pruitt’s security operation has included an armed detail that travels with him on official business, and on whom the EPA initially fixed blame for insisting on first-class airfare for the secretary last year.
They had argued that since he was a lightning rod for protesters and subject to physical threats, he needed to be at all times where security could be within arm’s reach.
EPA spending on security resources and equipment, however, has gone far beyond what Pruitt’s predecessors dared. Former Obama-era administrator Lisa Jackson’s security cost less than one-third as much.
Among the budget line-items: $742,000 in salaries, plus untold travel costs, more than $80,000 on radios and another $8,000 for shoulder holsters to hold them, and for travel chargers.
The expense reports turned over to The Intercept under the FOIA law showed $150,900 was spent on vehicle leases.
Just one of them, a 12-month lease for an upgraded Chevy Suburban with bulletproof seats, cost the government $10,200.
Another $6,786 was paid to a contractor who installed a card-reader and put a ‘panic alarm’ in Pruitt’s office that connected to where his security officers work.
The ‘breaching kit’ for breaking down doors could have uses beyond barging into the homes and offices of of stubborn polluters.
In March 2017, Pruitt’s security detail called police in Washington to report that they couldn’t contact their boss. Fearing he might be unconscious, the guards burst through his locked apartment door – only to find him sound asleep.
The EPA spent a whopping $2,460 to replace the door.