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Scott Pruitt spent your money on an SUV with bulletproof seats

The EPA administrator is sparing no expense for his security.

Scott Pruitt got himself a fancy car fully equipped with bullet-resistant seat covers on the EPA’s dime.

For past EPA administrators, a Chevy Tahoe was sufficient, but not for Pruitt. He upgraded to a fully-loaded Suburban last June, complete with leather interior, bucket seats in the second row, Wi-Fi, and GPS, because, according to an unnamed former EPA official, it was comparable to the cars used to ferry other Cabinet officials around Washington, D.C.

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The lease on the car ran the agency $10,200 for the first year, according to publicly available government records.

Meanwhile, the old car that past EPA administrators used is reportedly sitting idle in EPA headquarters. But the agency renewed the lease on that vehicle in February of last year, too, at a cost of $9,180, according to government records.

Read: Somehow things just got worse for Scott Pruitt

The embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency has come under fire for his lavish spending and his obsession with security. The government’s top ethics watchdog on Monday said he had broken the law to buy himself a soundproof booth for his office. He’s flown first class at taxpayer expense, again citing security, and used four email addresses to communicate, prompting the chair of the Senate’s top environmental committee, Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, to investigate.

Pruitt’s chief of security, Nino Perrotta — who has played an outsized role in greenlighting additional security measures — reportedly also approved the purchase of seat covers made out of a Kevlar-like material, an unnamed EPA official told the Washington Post, at a cost of hundreds of dollars, justifying the expense as an additional security precaution.

Perrotta has clashed with EPA staffers over the additional security measures, and, at least once, things got physical. He had to be physically separated from the former head of the EPA’s homeland security office, Mario Caraballo, after things got particularly heated during a meeting last summer, according to the New York Times.

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Read: Scott Pruitt was such a bad tenant his landlords changed the locks on him, report says

“We would like to put this rumor to rest. EPA has no bulletproof vehicles, the agency has no contracts for any bulletproof vehicles, and the agency never sought any contracts for bulletproof vehicles,” EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox told VICE News in an email. “Security decisions are made by EPA’s Protective Service Detail and are similar to security protocol across the federal government.”

To be clear, however, the Washington Post did not report that the EPA had any bulletproof vehicles, but rather that it had bullet-resistant seat covers. The EPA did not respond to VICE News’ request for clarification on that point.

Cover image: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks at a news conference at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, Tuesday, April 3, 2018, on his decision to scrap Obama administration fuel standards. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)