EPA officials raised concerns about Pruitt’s 2017 Italy trip
WASHINGTON — Career officials at the Environmental Protection Agency raised concerns about then-Administrator Scott Pruitt’s move to book an expensive plane ticket to Italy and the involvement of non-U.S. officials in planning his trip, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Hundreds of pages of new emails the EPA provided in recent weeks to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee shed new light on the extent to which Pruitt’s personal preferences drove travel planning and created friction within the agency before he resigned earlier this month.
The committee’s probe is one of numerous investigations into Pruitt’s ethical and management decisions that have continued even after his departure.
Committee spokeswoman Amanda Thompson declined to comment on the new documents, writing in an email, “The Committee will wait until the conclusion of our investigation to release or comment on our findings.”
Emails from April 2017 chart how Pruitt and his wife, Marlyn, requested that aides book business-class tickets out of New York City to Rome on Delta Air Lines — Pruitt’s preferred carrier. In response, EPA travel coordinator Gail Davis questioned Pruitt’s need to sit in business class and travel out of New York City.
EPA officials initially explored whether Marlyn Pruitt could attend the trip as a member of the U.S. delegation to the G-7, according to three current and former agency staffers. In that case, the federal government would have covered her costs. But that option did not materialize, and she did not make the trip.
Davis, citing federal rules on when officials can travel in business class, wrote to then-deputy director for scheduling and advance Millan Hupp, “I cannot upgrade unless the flight is over [14] hours and no rest stop.”
Three days later, Davis informed Hupp, a political appointee, that if Pruitt went ahead and departed from New York but flew on American Airlines, the official government carrier, it would be much less expensive.
Davis underscored the point that flying Delta out of John F. Kennedy Airport would cost about $3,000 more than flying American out of Washington.
“The Delta flight is a noncontract carrier and is ($4,690.96 coach class fare),” Davis wrote, adding that “there will of course need to be a justification for the $3,000 difference” and why the administrator would not leave from his “duty station.”
According to two individuals familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency deliberations, Pruitt wanted to depart from New York to travel on a nonstop Delta flight to Rome.
By the time Pruitt left for Italy in early June, the head of his protective detail had drafted a memo saying that he needed to fly in business or first class as a security precaution. As a result, Pruitt’s round-trip ticket to Italy cost $7,003.52. That price tag does not include the $36,068.50 military flight Pruitt took from Cincinnati to JFK after attending an infrastructure event with President Donald Trump right before his overseas trip. The military jet was approved at the time by ethics officials.