EPA Provides Example of Why Scott Pruitt Has to Fly First-Class

Doesn't that look nice? Don't you wish you could afford to fly first-class? Now you can! Just become America's most hated EPA administrator and this could be yours.United Airlines

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

As long as I’ve gotten myself on the Scott Pruitt bandwagon, I guess I might as well keep at it. Here’s the latest from Henry Barnet, director of EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement:

Barnet said Pruitt’s detail has been alarmed at some of the confrontations they have had to defuse while traveling in public.

As an example, Barnet recounted an incident from October at the airport in Atlanta. An individual approached Pruitt with his cell phone recording, yelling at him “‘Scott Pruitt, you’re f—ing up the environment,’ those sort of terms,” Barnet said.

….Pruitt’s security detail now performs a new threat assessment every 90 days “because the threats are so prevalent” to make sure procedures and tactics are up to date, Barnet said. EPA’s independent Office of Inspector General, which investigates threats against Pruitt, told POLITICO on Thursday that none of the threats it has received have been related to his air travel.

October. In the airport. That’s after Pruitt started traveling first-class, and it’s not in the plane anyway so it would have happened regardless. This is not the greatest example in the world of why Pruitt has to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to fly up front with all the rich people.

You want my guess? No? Too bad. I figure this is a cozy little conspiracy between Pruitt and his agent in charge. Pruitt wants to fly first-class. His security agent likes the idea of flying first-class too. So the agent claims Pruitt is in mortal danger from the throngs of people who recognize the EPA administrator in airports, and Pruitt winks and says he’s just following the advice of his security team. It’s a win-win.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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