Scott Pruitt’s only tenuous claim to environmental protection concerns a sort of wetland preservation — namely, his immense contributions to the ethical swamp President Trump promised to drain.

And yet the notoriously antienvironment Environmental Protection Agency chief remains employed by a president renowned for firing people on and off television (and Twitter). Pruitt’s remarkable longevity amid accumulating scandal sends a clear signal that the Trump administration — which is, after all, often run from Florida — is as swampy as they come.

Thanks to Pruitt’s penchant for expensive, extraneous and ethically dubious personal luxuries, official trappings and security measures, his drive to undo decades of hard-won environmental progress threatens to become bogged down in, according to the New York Times’ count, 10 different investigations. Recent reports by the Times and others suggest these habits date to Pruitt’s time as a state legislator and attorney general in Oklahoma, where he also maintained mutually beneficial relationships with industry and lobbyists.

The enviable $50-a-night rate Pruitt was paying for a Washington condominium connected to an energy lobbyist draws the most direct line between his pro-business policies and personal indulgences. As it happens, Pruitt and his associates reportedly got a good deal on a lobbyist’s digs in Oklahoma City, too.

When he’s not being accommodated by the industries he largely fails to regulate, Pruitt can be found traveling about the country and even the world at inflated expense to taxpayers. Part of the extraordinary cost can be attributed to first-class airfare and accommodations for his sizable retinue, present even on personal trips to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl. The administrator, who has been roundly criticized by predecessors from both parties, apparently believes his courageous defiance of climate science necessitates an unprecedented 24-hour security detail that has cost taxpayers nearly $3 million.

Perhaps the most enduring and absurd symbol of the Pruitt era is the $43,000 custom soundproof phone booth installed in his office in violation of spending laws to allow the administrator to “make and receive calls to discuss sensitive information.” It would be the ideal place for him to take a call from the White House regarding the sensitive matter of his departure.

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