April 7, 2018

Scott Pruitt’s Overworked Security Team Has Cost Taxpayers $3 Million

Records show he enlisted protection for Disneyland and football games—very threatening places.

Chris Kleponis/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Scott Pruitt may have been spared in Friday evening’s news dump, but the ethical questions threatening his role as Environmental Protection Agency administrator continue apace.

Financial documents obtained by the Associated Press reveal that over the year that Pruitt has been on the job, the embattled EPA head has spent upwards of $3 million on his 20-member security detail—a staggering figure that is reportedly more than three times the amount his predecessor shelled out for a part-time security team. The records also appear to confirm previous allegations that Pruitt had used multiple security agents for non-EPA trips, including a family vacation to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl football game.

Pruitt has been under intense fire for his lavish, tax-payer funded spending habits, which include a secure telephone booth in his office, lavish furniture (he reportedly wanted a bulletproof desk but was ultimately rebuffed), and regularly flying first-class during official EPA trips. As with all of his financial excesses, he defended the pricey flights as a security necessity—this time to shield him from potential harassers in coach. “We’ve had some incidents on travel dating back to when I first started serving in the March to April timeframe,” he told the New Hampshire Union Leader in February. “We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment.” 

His overworked, 24-hour security detail also diverts the agency’s attention from EPA-related investigations. As CNN reported last November, Pruitt’s security demands have resulted in fewer special agents looking into serious environmental crimes such as drinking water pollution and asbestos disposals.

Adding to Pruitt’s mounting woes this week is the controversy over his ties to an energy lobbyist couple who rented out a room in their DC condo to him for just $50 a night. (Pruitt, in turn, approved a pipeline expansion plan by an energy company linked to the lobbyist’s firm, though the EPA and the lobbying firm deny any impropriety.) News of the living arrangement was said to have exasperated White House officials, including Chief of Staff John Kelly who last week reportedly advised President Donald Trump to get rid of the scandal-ridden EPA chief.  

Nonetheless, Pruitt still has his fans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). But none as important as the president. In a tweet Friday, Trump voiced his support for Pruitt, saying he was “doing a great job.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate