Pruitt Dodges Questions On The $43,000 Booth He Had Installed In His Office
Source: Talking Points Memo
By Matt Shuham | April 26, 2018 11:37 am
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt asserted Thursday that EPA lawyers believed the $43,000 soundproof booth he had installed in his office was lawful, despite a Government Accountability Office report to the contrary.
Pruitt also said the booth was “actually not a SCIF” — that is, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility — despite the EPA’s previous claim to the GAO that the booth “enables him to use this area to make and receive classified telephone calls (up to the top secret level) for the purpose of conducting agency business.” In September, a spokesperson for the EPA called Pruitt’s booth a SCIF.
“What you are referring to is a secured communication area in the administrator’s office so secured calls can be received and made,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told the Washington Post in a statement for a story on the booth. “Federal agencies need to have one of these so that secured communications, not subject to hacking from the outside, can be held. It’s called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). This is something which a number, if not all, Cabinet offices have and EPA needs to have updated.”
Pressed by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) during a hearing of the House Committee on Energy and the Environment’s Subcommittee on Environment, all Pruitt committed to is that the matter was under investigation.
Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/pruitt-dodges-questions-on-the-43000-booth-he-had-installed-in-his-office
Pruitt: I Wasn’t Aware Of ‘Amount’ Nor Process Of Five-Figure Raises
By Matt Shuham | April 26, 2018 10:50 am
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Thursday again claimed ignorance, at the time, of five-figure raises given to several senior advisers of his at the EPA.
But his denial differed slightly since he last spoke about the raises.
“I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the bypassing or the [Presidential Personnel Office] process not being respected,” he told Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), who asked about his aide Sarah Greenwalt’s reported claim in an internal email that Pruitt had approved of her five-figure raises, which utilized an administrative loophole to escape White House scrutiny.
The comment came during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment.
Pruitt told Tonko that his chief of staff, Ryan Jackson — who signed his own name and “for Scott Pruitt” next to the approvals for Greenwalt’s and others’ raises — utilized “delegations giving him that authority.”
more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/pruitt-i-wasnt-aware-of-amount-nor-process-of-five-figure-raises
= new reply since forum marked as read
... would have been cheaper.
