The inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency said it will review Administrator Scott Pruitt’s use of a security detail during personal visits to Disneyland, the Rose Bowl and college basketball games, according to a Democratic senator who requested the review.
Last month, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote a letter to the EPA IG’s office, notifying the agency watchdog that Pruitt had used EPA security agents during family trips and requesting the IG add the additional details to its review of Pruitt’s expensive travel and round-the-clock security expenses. According to a statement from Whitehouse on Thursday, EPA IG Arthur Elkins responded, saying the issues raised in the letter were “within the authority of the OIG to review, and we will do so,” he said.
Elkins told Whitehouse that the audit of the use of security detail on the personal trips would be reviewed separate from the IG’s current review of the travel and security concerns.
According to the letter Whitehouse sent to the IG last month, Pruitt used between two and three dozen different security agents over the course of six weeks and the agents reportedly accompanied Pruitt to the Rose Bowl, a family vacation to Disneyland and to a University of Kentucky basketball game, as CNN was first to report.
As Pruitt is embroiled in audits from his agency’s watchdog, lawmakers have called for his resignation as the EPA chief has been hit with consistent reports of impropriety in recent weeks.
Among those scandals: He reportedly spent $25,000 on a soundproof phone booth, regularly requests per diem lodging expenses above the government’s daily spending rate, rented a room in a home owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist, defied a White House in order to give two close aides massive raises and consistently flies first class in order to avoid the public shouting curse words at him.
