On May 1, 2017 Nino Perrotta, “Acting” Special Agent in Charge of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s personal security detail, wrote a memo to justify his boss’s flagrantly wasteful travel habits. Perrotta wrote, “We have observed and increased awareness and at times lashing out from passengers which occurs while the Administrator is seated in coach with PSD [his personal security detail] not easily accessible to him due to uncontrolled full flights.”
Does the above sentence even make sense? I guess it’s the best we can expect from a gentleman whose describes himself as “Acting” Special Agent in Charge. An Acting Special Agent in Charge might held to a higher standard than an “Acting” Special Agent in Charge, but who knows — anything is possible in the Trump “administration.”
“Therefore,” the “Acting” Special Agent in Charge continues, “we believe that the continued use of coach seats for the Administrator would endanger his life and therefore respectfully ask that he be placed in either business or first class accommodations.”
You’d think Perrotta’s request would include specific examples of “lashing out,” but there is nothing of the kind in the 87-word memo. Apparently, “Acting” Special Agents in Charge don’t need to provide examples. They simply “act” and things get approved.
Eventually, examples of “threats” against Pruitt were released to the public.
From The Washington Post:
Documents released Monday to the Post, the New York Times and BuzzFeed in response to public records requests show that the EPA was working on 33 threat investigations as of mid-March. Ten of those in fiscal 2018 involved Pruitt, the documents show.
The documents include incident reports about the threats Pruitt faced, some of them sent via Twitter, emails, postcards and phone calls. Investigators looked into threats involving a range of people in an array of states, at times recommending criminal prosecution of those involved — though federal prosecutors often declined to move forward with charges.
In one instance in January, according to the records, a person in Arkansas, who claimed to be 85 years old, wrote an expletive-filled letter on the back of paperwork from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The person mentioned Pruitt’s comments on global warming and said of the EPA chief, “[I] hope you & your kind die of cancer of the guts, slowly in agony, & rot forever in a toxic sewer in hell.” What exactly investigators found was unclear, but they concluded the case should be “closed without further action.”
Now I’m finally starting to get it. “Acting” special agents deal with “threats,” while acting special agents deal with threats.