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WASHINGTON — Federal investigators concluded in a report Thursday that Scott Pruitt had spent nearly $124,000 on “excessive” travel arrangements as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and recommended that the agency try to recover the money.

The report, issued by the E.P.A.’s inspector general, brings to a close a nearly two-year investigation into Mr. Pruitt’s travel. It found that 40 trips or planned trips that were later canceled during 10 months starting in March 2017, the time frame of the investigation, had cost taxpayers a total of more than $985,000.

About 82 percent of that was for first-class and business-class airfare, and 16 of the trips involved stops in Tulsa, Okla., where Mr. Pruitt owned a home. The expenses also included a $629-per-night hotel room in Italy. Many of the trips were approved by agency officials retroactively after Mr. Pruitt’s travel.

Of the total cost, inspectors concluded that $123,942 had been spent “without sufficient justification and, initially, without appropriate approval authority.”