Remember Scott Pruitt? Of course you do. His hard-snacking, phone-boothing, lotion-loving, used-Trump-mattress-seeking, homophobic-sandwich-craving antics at the EPA were only overshadowed by his despicable attempts to make it easier for polluters to profit off killing Americans.
Well, yesterday the Office of Inspector General published its report on Pruitt’s travel expenses, which totaled some $985,037 over 10 months in 2017. Of that, 82% is airfare expenses. And surprise surprise, Pruitt, whose out of date LinkedIn profile describes him as “a leading voice for fiscal responsibility,” appears to have bilked taxpayers out of over a hundred thousand dollars in what the report determined was excessive travel costs. (That said, his LinkedIn also describes him as “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda,” so maybe running up a six-figure travel tab was part of his plan to hollow out the EPA from the inside…)
The OIG looked at 40 of Pruitt’s trips between March 1 and December 31 2017, and found that (take a deep breath) Pruitt: improperly flew first and business class, took non-contract airlines without justification, stayed at hotels well above the per diem rates, failed to provide the proper paperwork to justify his trips home, didn’t get the right approval for his international business-class travel, and failed to fill out international trip reports fully and accurately.
OIG basically confirms what everyone was saying all along: there was no reason for Pruitt to have a massive security detail starting on day 1, there was no security justification for him to fly first class, and he was improperly taking advantage of taxpayer money for his luxury travel. And while the EPA claims OIG overestimated the expenses because Pruitt’s security detail didn’t always fly first class, OIG responded by pointing out that if they didn’t accompany him in first class, the security detail probably wasn’t necessary anyway.
And even the trips he didn’t take cost us bigly: although six of Pruitt’s 40 trips were cancelled, they somehow still cost $106,000. (Apparently in part because they weren’t cancelled until advance staff were already in, for example, Australia, and then lied about the trip being a success.)
Of the 34 trips he did take, 16 involved going back to his Oklahoma home, but Pruitt only bothered to provide official travel justifications for six of them. The other ten Pruitt seems to have paid for himself, but he still didn’t complete the requisite paperwork explaining why the trips were warranted in the first place. This likely validates suspicions that Pruitt scheduled official business in the region so that he would then only have to pay for the shorter trip home, as opposed to a flight all the way from DC to OK.
The OIG recommends that the EPA look at whether the excess $123,942 should be recovered--meaning Pruitt might be forced to pay back the cost of his fancy flights. (EPA, unsurprisingly, disagrees, and retroactively approved his travel expenses.)
Given that since resigning in disgrace from the EPA, Pruitt’s been cozying up to a coal baron, it shouldn’t be too big a hassle for him to find the funds.
And if he doesn’t pay up, can he honestly call himself “a leading voice for fiscal responsibility?”
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