Press Releases

Today Rep. Beyer issued the following statement on the report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) outlining wasteful spending on travel by disgraced former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt:

“The OIG investigation confirms the warnings that I and others made at the time about Scott Pruitt’s gross abuse of his official position. Pruitt owes the American people a lot of money and he should pay them back. The OIG report also makes it clear that Pruitt cannot be trusted and should never hold public office again.

“This report gave Pruitt every break imaginable, given the many allegations made to my office by his former Deputy Chief of Staff it even strikes me that he is getting off lightly. For instance, the report was unable to calculate unnecessary costs accrued by Pruitt’s decisions to fly on non-contract carriers, decisions which he made with no regard to taxpayer expense in order to accrue Delta frequent flyer miles. The OIG report did not look at spending beyond December of 2017, so fully half of his tenure was unexplored. The report also did not examine other decisions Pruitt made which wasted taxpayer funds on frivolities.

“A striking aspect of the report was documentation of repeated attempts to minimize or cover up Pruitt’s abuse of the public trust by his subordinates. For instance, EPA employees repeatedly failed to submit trip reports, and even told investigators that a planned trip to Australia on which thousands of dollars were spent ‘was completed successfully without incident,’ despite the fact that the trip was cancelled.

“Unfortunately, Pruitt’s successor is sweeping that wrongdoing under the rug. Pruitt’s refusal to submit to interviews has allowed some of his most corrupt actions to evade formal investigation by the EPA OIG. Now Andrew Wheeler is allowing him to cheat taxpayers out of thousands of dollars by proclaiming his intention not to follow up on the findings of today’s report. Pruitt should not be allowed to evade the consequences of his actions just because he was dismissed before his offenses were fully uncovered.”

Representative Beyer was the first Member of Congress to issue a formal statement calling for Scott Pruitt’s resignation. He led 64 House Democrats urging the President to dismiss Pruitt, and has led numerous oversight initiatives focused on Pruitt’s tenure at the EPA. Beyer led the first Congressional oversight effort taking issue with ethical lapses by Pruitt’s successor, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler.