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marble falls

(57,063 posts) Tue May 8, 2018, 09:21 PM May 2018

Passengers 'Lashing Out' At Scott Pruitt Justify First-Class Travel, New EPA Memo Says

Passengers ‘Lashing Out’ At Scott Pruitt Justify First-Class Travel, New EPA Memo Says

Thousands of newly released EPA documents show the agency went to great lengths to shield the embattled administrator from encounters with the public.

By Nick Visser

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-travel-memo-first-class_us_5af0fa79e4b0c4f19325fd4f

Newly released Environmental Protection Agency documents attempt to justify administrator Scott Pruitt’s frequent use of first-class and business-class travel with a claim that fellow passengers were “lashing out” at him.

The 87-word memo, dated May 1, 2017, was drafted by Pasquale Perrotta, who recently quit as head of Pruitt’s personal security detail. Perrotta wrote that he had noticed “lashing out from passengers which occurs while the Administrator is seated in coach with [his security detail] not easily accessible to him due to uncontrolled full flights.”

“We believe that the continued use of coach seats for the Administrator would endanger his life and therefore respectfully ask that he be placed in either business and or first class accommodations,” the memo concludes.

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BuzzFeed notes that three investigations have been launched this year involving Pruitt, but all have been closed due to lack of evidence that the administrator faced serious harm. One such incident, closed due to a lack of an “overt” threat, involved a Newsweek magazine cover that someone drew a mustache on and taped to an EPA elevator.

<snip>

Pruitt has since said he would start flying coach.