EPA watchdog: turns out Scott Pruitt didn't need 20 security guards
Scott Pruitts stint as head of the Environmental Protection Agency may have come to a conclusively inelegant end, but his blunders continue to haunt the Trump administration.
Pruitt was forced to resign in July after a flood of alleged ethics breaches became too much for his boss, President Trump, to bear. From Pruitt using his motorcades lights and sirens to make dinner reservations to asking his scheduler to help secure a Chick-fil-A franchise for his wife, the administrators conduct in office left corruption watchdogs scrambling.
By the time he resigned, Pruitt had triggered more than a dozen audits, inquiries, and investigations across the government. Many of the investigations are still underway, and on Tuesday, the EPAs Office of the Inspector General released its report looking at Pruitts security detail. Like the investigation into Pruitts $43,000 phone booth, this one also concluded that the security detail was overkill and was unwarranted.
You may recall that Pruitt received a full-time security detail with upward of 20 members, an unprecedented ask from an EPA administrator. The team even accompanied Pruitt on personal trips to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl. (You may also recall his security detail had to break down the door of the condo he rented for $50 a night from a lobbyists wife. It turned out Pruitt was napping.)
Keeping 20 burly security workers on hand around the clock wasnt just unnecessary; it was also very expensive. The inspector general reported that security costs more than doubled from $1.6 million to $3.5 million during Pruitts first 11 months in office, and that the threats Pruitt reported did not justify the increase.
Pruitt said he needed bodyguards because he was facing an increased number of threats, from hostile passengers on aircraft to threatening posts on Twitter and Facebook. But the IG found that Pruitt requested a beefed-up security team even before his first day in office.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/5/17819548/epa-scott-pruitt-inspector-security-detail