A Guide to the Investigations Faced by EPA Chief

Calls for Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to resign escalated Wednesday when nearly 170 congressional Democrats demanded his departure.

A resolution, sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, that called for Pruitt’s resignation drew 39 Senate co-sponsors. It was the largest number of senators to ever sign on to a resolution calling for a Cabinet official to be removed from office, according to Kara Baer, a legislative editor in the Senate Library.

The resolution is not likely to go anywhere without Republican support, which it lacks. Still, it highlights the pressure Pruitt already faces from nine investigations — by Congress, the White House and his own agency — into whether he misused taxpayer funding or violated other legal standards.

This week the Government Accountability Office, often called the watchdog arm of Congress, found that the EPA broke the law when it spent $43,000 on a secure phone booth for Pruitt. And on Wednesday, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget told Congress he also intended to examine Pruitt’s spending habits.

Jahan Wilcox, a spokesman for the EPA, said in a statement that Pruitt remained focused on his job. “Administrator Pruitt is focused on advancing President Trump’s agenda of regulatory certainty and environmental stewardship,” he said.

Here is a guide to the investigations:

The EPA’s office of the inspector general, an independent investigating unit within the agency, opened an inquiry last summer into Pruitt’s frequent travel home to Oklahoma.

Early reports found Pruitt had spent 43 out of 92 days either in the his home state or traveling to or from there between March and May of 2017, at a cost of $12,000 to taxpayers. That inquiry has since been expanded twice: once to include Pruitt’s use of private and military flights, including to Oklahoma, and later to incorporate a four-day trip Pruitt took to Morocco in December.

Lawmakers have argued that the Morocco trip, during which Pruitt promoted natural gas exports, was inappropriate since the EPA plays no formal role in overseeing gas exports. The trip cost about $40,000, according to agency records, with the flights alone costing $17,000.

The EPA inspector general also has taken up an inquiry into a meeting Pruitt held with the National Mining Association.

Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, requested the investigation after a report that Pruitt had encouraged the coal mining industry group to urge President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement. Critics of the meeting said the discussion violated anti-lobbying laws for government officials.

Both the EPA and the industry group have denied that Pruitt did anything improper.

Meanwhile, the GAO is investigating Pallone’s complaint about a National Cattleman’s Beef Association video in which Pruitt appears. In the video, produced by the lobbying organization last year, Pruitt describes his opposition to an Obama-era clean water rule.

Pallone and others asked auditors to investigate whether there the promotional video involved an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

There are a number of lines of inquiry into Pruitt’s 24-hour security detail.

His security staff of at least 20 people is more than three times as large as ones for previous EPA administrators. Agency officials have confirmed that the EPA has spent about $3 million in taxpayer money so far on salary, overtime and travel expenses for the security team.

Two EPA inspector general investigations are looking into Pruitt’s security expenses, as is the House Oversight Committee. Among other things, investigators are examining the role that Pasquale Perrotta, who heads Pruitt’s security, played in the spending, EPA sources have confirmed. Perrotta, who is widely known as Nino, has not responded to requests for comment.

Among the allegations raised by watchdog groups, lawmakers and former EPA officials are that Pruitt took the security detail on family trips to Disneyland and a Rose Bowl game and that the EPA approved thousands of dollars in bulletproof vests, weapons and the $43,000 secure phone booth in violation of spending rules.

The GAO has already ruled that Pruitt’s purchase of the phone booth broke the law.

Specifically, auditors found, the EPA was required to notify Congress about purchases larger than $5,000 for office renovations and that the agency also violated the Antideficiency Act, which is designed to prevent unbudgeted spending.

But the inquiries are not over. House and Senate Democrats have asked Pruitt to respond to allegations by Kevin Chmielewski, the former EPA deputy chief of staff, that the administrator also exceeded the office spending limit with art on loan from the Smithsonian Institution and the framing of an American flag.

On Monday, the EPA inspector general issued what is expected to be the first part of an ongoing investigation into the use of a provision of a clean drinking water law to hire ex-lobbyists and give raises to political aides.

Initial documents made public this week show that Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, signed off on substantial pay raises for two aides who previously had worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma. Two Democratic senators have asked the GAO to investigate the raises as well, though that inquiry is pending the full outcome of the inspector general’s report, aides said.

The House Oversight Committee wants to know more about Pruitt’s living arrangements last year.

The EPA has acknowledged that Pruitt paid $50 per night to live in a condo co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist who has had business in front of the agency. The EPA produced a memo from the agency’s ethics office saying that Pruitt’s living arrangements did not violate federal gift rules because the rate was withing “reasonable market value.” However, the ethics office later walked back its assessment with a new memo saying that its staff did not have all the facts before issuing the ethics clearance.

That prompted the federal government’s top ethics official to take the unusual step of sending a letter to the EPA asking the agency to take “appropriate actions to address any violations.”

Amid the questions surrounding Pruitt’s travel and spending decisions, there is one investigation on an entirely different issue: His selection process for members of a science advisory committee.

Specifically, the GAO accepted a request from two Democratic senators to look into the EPA’s dismissal of scientists from agency boards that advise on health and scientific matters. The GAO has said it will look into the role that political appointees at the EPA had in choosing a new roster of advisers, which drew largely from industry and state regulatory bodies rather than university researchers.

Lastly, in recent days, a watchdog group alerted lawmakers that Pruitt had two undisclosed government-issued email addresses in addition to two that were known.

Democrats have demanded an investigation by the inspector general, although one has not been opened.

Separately, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., has chided Pruitt, and has asked him to explain his email use. “During your confirmation hearing, I specifically asked you to ‘refrain from taking any action — that makes it difficult or impossible for the public to access your official written communications under the Freedom of Information Act,'” Barrasso wrote to the administrator.