When we last checked in with Scott Pruitt, it had just emerged that his $100,000 taxpayer-funded getaway to Morocco last year was, surprise surprise, organized by a longtime pal who is currently being paid $40,000 a month to “promote the kingdom’s cultural and economic interests.” That revelation, of course, followed similar reports exposing Pruitt’s shady housing arrangement with an energy lobbyist; his request for the E.P.A to rent him a $100,000-a-month private jet; his alleged habit of making travel decisions based on his “desire to visit particular cities or countries rather than official business” and to then tell staff to “‘find me something to do [in those locations]’ to justify the use of taxpayer funds”; his alleged habit of staying in hotels that vastly exceeded the government per diem, sometimes by 300 percent; his $43,000 illegal phone booth; his decision to give two longtime aides huge bonuses after they were denied by the White House and also to lie about them; his insistence on using lights and sirens to speed through traffic in order to get to cocktail hour on time; and his fondness for demoting or reassigning people who object to his demands. The fact that he was able to hold onto his job after all this, despite working for a guy who supposedly takes great pleasure in firing people, suggests that there is basically nothing Pruitt could do that would result in his dismissal. Not even entertaining an alleged pederast on the taxpayer dime.

We learned as much on Friday when, during a meeting at the White House, the president was asked if he still had confidence in the E.P.A. administrator, to which Trump responded, “Yes, I do.” That question presumably came up because a day earlier, The New York Times had reported that Pruitt shared a meal at a five-star restaurant in Italy with, among others, Cardinal George Pell, a Vatican official the E.P.A reportedly knew was under investigation for alleged child sexual abuse. (Per the E.P.A.’s own statement, Pell was charged with multiple sexual offenses less than three weeks later.) According to Times reporter Eric Lipton, not only did Pruitt break $240 per-person bread with Pell (and that’s without the wine pairing!), but the E.P.A. also apparently went to great lengths to make sure no one knew the accused sex offender was there, despite a senior aide to Pruitt writing an e-mail from the table, noting she was with the two men.

Why was Pruitt so keen on having a fancy dinner with a guy who even he must have known was problematic? Probably because the two share a passion for dismissing scientific research that shows climate change is a real thing that’s happening (in addition to holding out skepticism about evolution). Indeed, the two men reportedly discussed a plan to set up a “debate” at the Vatican about climate change. Pell, who says he will plead not guilty to all of the sex offense allegations against him, previously delivered a speech for a U.K. climate-science denial group in which he claimed that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere will be good for plants. So you can see how he and Pruitt would have hit it off.

And therein, of course, lies the reason Pruitt can pal around with accused sex offenders and jet around the world on taxpayers’ dimes with almost total job security. As long as he’s gutting Obama-era regulations and turning the environment into a truck-stop toilet bowl—and all reports say he has, even in spite of the corruption distractions—he’s fine in Donald Trump’s book.