As he works to reverse many of the environmental regulations set under the Obama administration, EPA chief Scott Pruitt has dialed up both security and secrecy at the agency.
“Mr. Pruitt, according to the employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs, often makes important phone calls from other offices rather than use the phone in his office, and he is accompanied, even at E.P.A. headquarters, by armed guards, the first head of the agency to ever request round-the-clock security,” says The New York Times. Pruitt has also stopped publicly posting his appointment schedule online, a practice he kept up while attorney general of Oklahoma, and employees say he sometimes requests they leave their cellphones outside meeting rooms, or not take notes.
Pruitt’s supporters argue the extra security measures are necessary given the level of change he’s trying to introduce at the EPA, and what they claim are the agency’s left-leaning politics. “E.P.A. is legendary for being stocked with leftists,” Steven J. Milloy, a member of Trump’s EPA transition team, told the Times. “If you work in a hostile environment, you’re not the one that’s paranoid.”
Meanwhile, the EPA has been inundated with Freedom of Information Act requests, receiving more than 2,000 in the last two months, “many of them focused on Mr. Pruitt, asking for every possible record related to his tenure, including text messages, telephone records and even his web browsing history.”
After submitting one such FOIA request in April and hearing nothing back, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, sued the EPA for not disclosing documents he claims show Pruitt’s conflicts of interest, reports The Seattle Times.