EPA/SCOTT PRUITT: “EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s security team decided last year he should fly first class to avoid confrontations with angry individuals on planes and in airports, an agency official said Thursday [2-15-18] as EPA sought to explain the chief’s penchant for pricey travel.
‘He was approached in the airport numerous times, to the point of profanities being yelled at him and so forth,’ Henry Barnet, director of the agency’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, told POLITICO.
‘The team leader felt that he was being placed in a situation where he was unsafe on the flight,’ said Barnet, a career employee and longtime law enforcement official who joined EPA in 2011. EPA offered the explanation after five days of controversy over Pruitt’s travel that started with a Washington Post report that he and EPA staff had racked up more than $90,000 in travel in early June. His critics include Republican members of Congress who said they routinely ride coach and can’t understand why Pruitt can’t as well… But Barnet said that Pruitt’s travels grew so tense that by May the agent in charge of his security detail recommended he travel in first class when possible…
EPA has previously said it has seen a sharp increase in threats against the administrator since Pruitt took the job last year.”
-Alex Guillen, “Pruitt’s security threat? A passenger shouting, ‘You’re f—ing up the environment’,” Politico, Feb. 15, 2018 08:57pm