EPA chief Scott Pruitt bravely commits to flying coach

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will stop using taxpayer money to pay for first class plane tickets and will fly coach, he told CBS News’ Major Garrett on Wednesday.

Pruitt’s reversal comes a week after the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, demanded all documents about Pruitt’s government travel.

The Washington Post reported in mid-February that Pruitt had regularly been flying first class at taxpayer expense. In one short stretch last June, Pruitt and his top aides spent $90,000 in taxpayer funds for their travel including a $1,641.43 first class seat on a flight from Washington, D.C., to New York City.

Pruitt and his team added fuel to the fire by changing their rationale for the luxurious accommodations, first claiming that Pruitt had a “blanket waiver” for such travel because of security concerns and then saying they had a waiver approved for each trip. A blanket waiver is illegal under federal rules.

Read: Scott Pruitt says "security incidents" made him fly first class again

Pruitt’s team also declined to elaborate on the nature of the security threats except to say that angry passengers were yelling at him.

“He was approached in the airport numerous times, to the point of profanities being yelled at him and so forth,” Henry Barnet, director of the agency's Office of Criminal Enforcement, told Politico.

After the controversy, Pruitt told CBS that he instructed his security detail to “accommodate those security threats in alternate ways, including—up to and including, flying coach going forward.”

Read: EPA chief Scott Pruitt thinks $1,600 is reasonable for a flight from DC to NYC

It's just the latest in a series of controversies about the misuse of taxpayer funds by top members of the Trump administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned last year after reports that he was flying on chartered planes.

Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and his chief of staff created a misleading pretext to get the government to cover his wife’s travel expenses to Europe last summer, according to a recent Inspector General report.

And Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Ben Carson is now the subject of an internal investigation about ordering a $31,000 table for his personal office. After initially defending the purchase, he announced that he was canceling the order Thursday morning. "At the request of the Secretary, the agency is working to rescind the order for the dining room set," a spokesman said.

Cover image: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on December 7, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images)