Press Releases

Today the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a report which found that over $3.5 million was spent on the personal security detail (PSD) of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, without justification.

Rep. Beyer issued the following statement:

“This IG report leaves no doubt that Scott Pruitt wasted huge amounts of taxpayer money on his own protection without justification.

Though many of my colleagues and I repeatedly raised concerns about Scott Pruitt, the President and Republican leaders in Congress chose to ignore these issues for months while Pruitt’s scandals became worse and worse. The Pruitt saga illustrates how sorely real oversight is needed as a check on the President, and how the GOP-led Congress has acted as a rubber stamp for the Trump Administration’s worst excesses.

We also know that this IG report is the tip of the iceberg, and that many more such reports are likely to follow in the coming weeks and months which may reveal new details about wrongdoing by Scott Pruitt and the rest of Donald Trump’s cabinet. The American people deserve a Congress that is not afraid to clean up the Trump culture of corruption.”

The IG report found that spending on Pruitt’s personal security detail incurred over “$3.5 million in costs from February 1, 2017, through December 31, 2017—an increase of over 110 percent compared to the prior period’s costs of $1.6 million—without documented justification.” The report also found that this spending was authorized by Pruitt without a threat analysis, and that the EPA failed to provide “any specific threats against Administrator Pruitt” to the Department of Homeland Security as it sought to evaluate the need for his unprecedented 24/7 protective detail.

The IG report on wasteful security spending by Scott Pruitt is the first in a series of such reports expected to be released in the coming weeks, several of which were requested by Rep. Beyer.