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

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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.

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In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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