WASHINGTON – The EPA spent more than $10,800 on average every day protecting Administrator Scott Pruitt last year even though there was no "documented justification" for his round-the-clock security, a new report from the agency's Inspector General concludes.

The audit found that the $3.5 million spent safeguarding Pruitt between Feb. 1 and Dec. 31, 2017, was twice the $1.5 million spent on protecting his predecessor, Gina McCarthy, during the previous 11-month period.

Pruitt resigned July 5 ending a tenure marked by allegations of misconduct that led to repeated calls for his ouster.

The former Oklahoma state attorney general was accused of spending extravagantly on travel and security, asking aides to run personal errands and accepting favorable terms for the rental of a condo owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist.

The Government Accountability Office, a separate watchdog agency, concluded earlier this year that the installation of a $43,000 soundproof telephone booth for Pruitt violated congressional appropriations law.

Pruitt and his aides often defended the size and cost of his security (including the use of first class air travel) as a response to an "unprecedented" number of death threats. But a former deputy associate administrator of the EPA's Office of Homeland Security signed off on a Feb. 14 assessment that the agency "has not identified any specific, credible, direct threat to the EPA administrator.”

By the time Pruitt left the agency in July, his protection detail comprised 19 agents providing 24-hour/7-days-a-week security – much more than the six full-time agents assigned to McCarthy in 2016.

In his office's report Tuesday, EPA Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. found that the agency's Protective Service Detail "has no final, approved standard operating procedures that address the level of protection required for the Administrator or how those services are to be provided."

And he scolded officials for relying on an August 2017 OIG summary report on overall threats rather than conducting its own analysis to determine the appropriate level of protection necessary for Pruitt.

"The (2017) report did not assess the potential danger presented by any of these threats," the audit released Tuesday found. "The OIG only provided statistics and the OIG’s report should not have been used to justify protective services."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, who is more low-key than Pruitt, has shed much of the round-the-clock security detail that Pruitt demanded.

Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group and a frequent Pruitt critic, said the report suggests the former administrator should never have been appointed.

“Scott Pruitt’s been gone more than two months, but the swampy stench he brought to EPA continues to waft from agency headquarters,” Cook said in a statement. “From the moment President Trump nominated him, it was evident that Pruitt not only held the EPA’s mission in contempt, but saw his post as a chance to pamper himself on the American taxpayer’s dime."

More:A list of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's ethical challenges, accusations

More:Rest assured, Trump hotel mattress search among the personal tasks Pruitt aide said she did for the boss

More:Scott Pruitt's $130 pens write another chapter in critics' unhappiness with his spending habits