The Obama administration left the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) investigative unit in tatters before giving President Donald Trump the keys to the agency.
The number of special agents in the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division cratered from 207 to 154 during the Obama era, which reduced the number of cases by 47 percent. One career EPA official believes that agency Chief Scott Pruitt will help the unit back on the straight and narrow.
“The last administration crippled EPA’s criminal enforcement program,” Henry Barnet, director of the EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, Forensics, and Training, said Friday in a press statement, referring to cuts that former President Barack Obama imposed on the staff of the agency’s investigative unit.
The EPA has 147 special agents in its Criminal Investigation Division, which is less than half the number of those employed in 2003, according to documentsPublic Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) obtained earlier this year through open records requests.
[contentcards url=”http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/18/scott-pruitt-must-face-down-obama-era-cuts-to-epas-investigative-unit/” target=”_blank”]