White House Telling Republicans To Tone Down Pruitt Defenses

Buh-bye Scotty.

Please select your preferred gap between ribs, Scott.

… For further details, see TPM’s extended list of Pruitt spending here:

• A soundproof phone booth in Pruitt’s office, even though the EPA already has so-called “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities”: $43,000, including installation.

• Bullet-resistant seat covers, alongside plenty of other unnecessary additions on a new SUV lease that was itself unnecessary, because the EPA already had one: $10,200 yearly lease.

• Five-digit raises for seven EPA staffers featured in a recent EPA IG document who had mostly worked at the EPA for less than a year: $204,693, despite Pruitt’s professed ignorance of the raises.

• Well-funded trips abroad, including to Italy ($120,000) and a planning trip to Australia by two staffers and three security officers ($45,000) even though the actual trip by Pruitt never happened.

• An unprecedentedly massive, 24/7 security detail that Pruitt’s taken along to venues like the Rose Bowl and Disneyland: At least $3,000,000.

• Cost to repair the door to Pruitt’s former townhouse, after said security detail smashed through it in a panic, only to find Pruitt napping inside: $2,460.

• Sweep for surveillance devices in the administrator’s office: $3,000.

• A now-cancelled contract for media monitoring with a GOP opposition research firm: $120,000.

• Subsequent contract to another GOP-aligned media firm to produce a reporting touting Pruitt’s accomplishments: $6,500.

• Private, charter and business-class flights justified as security expenses because Pruitt was apparently getting cursed at on airplanes: Tens of thousands of dollars, at least.