The $43,000 phone booth that then-EPA administrator Scott Pruitt installed in his office may not have been worth all the headaches it caused him. 
 
 He placed only one phone call to the White House, newly released records from the agency show. It lasted five minutes. 
 
 The head of the Environmental Protection Agency resigned last month after coming under fire for how he spent tax dollars and treated his staff. He made the five-minute call on Jan. 29, according to Verizon phone logs released in response to litigation filed by the Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group. 
 
 [Scott Pruitt’s $25,000 soundproof phone booth? It actually cost more like $43,000.] 
 
 The new documents do not show how many incoming calls Pruitt received in the soundproof booth, which he installed last year. In April, Pruitt testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee that he used the booth sparingly. 
 
 “It’s for confidential communications, and it’s rare,” he told Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). 
 
 
 
 Then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt at the White House in June. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) 
 
 Previously Pruitt had likened the booth to a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), which government officials use to conduct secure conversations, arguing that he needed it to discuss matters with the White House. The EPA has a SCIF at its headquarters on a different floor from the administrator’s office. 
 
 “Cabinet-level officials need to have access to secure communications,” the then-administrator testified in December. “It’s necessary for me to be able to do my job.” 
 
 EPA officials said Monday that they could not specify how many incoming calls Pruitt received from the White House in the soundproof booth. 
 
 “EPA has learned from Verizon that in order to request complete phone logs of all incoming and outgoing calls to or from these lines, EPA would need to supply Verizon with a subpoena for the records,” said EPA spokesman James Hewitt, who declined to say what the call was about. 
 
 The agency identified two phone lines associated with the booth, according to correspondence between EPA attorneys and Sierra Club lawyers. The phone numbers released through billing records for November involve calls technicians made to test the lines, EPA lawyers said. 
 
 The EPA voluntarily provided billing records for the booth through June 20, just two weeks before Pruitt resigned his post, that show no other outgoing calls from the booth. The Sierra Club’s original public-records request covered the period ending Dec. 6. 
 
 The Government Accountability Office concluded that Pruitt violated federal spending laws when he built the phone booth, because he spent more than $5,000 without providing advance notice to Congress. 
 
 While the original contract for the phone booth was slated to cost roughly $25,000, the agency ended up paying contractors an additional $18,000 to convert a closet space that could house it. That work included removing closed-circuit television equipment, pouring 55 square feet of concrete, installing a drop ceiling and patching and painting the room. 
 
 Pruitt told members of the Energy Committee in April that he did not know the project’s price tag had escalated to $43,000. “I was not aware of the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it . . . I would not have approved it,” he said. 
 
 A few hours later, Pruitt remarked to members of a House Appropriations subcommittee that in retrospect, the decision to install the booth “should not have been made.” 
 
 Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, said in a statement that the incident underscored the kind of managers President Trump has picked to run the federal government. 
 
 “With each new revelation it becomes clearer and clearer that Donald Trump enabled the most corrupt cabinet member ever to hang on far past his expiration date,” Pierce said, adding that Pruitt’s successor continues to advance policies that benefit corporate interests. “We need leadership at the EPA that can be trusted to protect our health, not polluter profits.” 
 
 Shortly after taking the helm of the EPA, acting administrator Andrew Wheeler indicated in an interview with E&E News that he does not intend to dismantle the phone booth. He added that he would maintain a policy Pruitt instituted in the spring that requires that at least two senior EPA officials beyond the administrator sign off on any expense over $5,000. 
 
 “It’s there,” Wheeler said of the booth. “It would be expensive to tear it apart. I don’t see any sense in tearing it apart. And in this day and age, I don’t know what the assessment was for the need of it.” 
 
 Read more 
 
 Pruitt’s $25,000 phone booth cost more like $43,000, records show 
 
 Pruitt blames aides and staff for spending missteps at EPA 
 
 Scott Pruitt resigns amid ethics, management scandals ||||| Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will have a soundproof communication booth. (Susan Walsh/AP) 
 
 The Environmental Protection Agency is spending nearly $25,000 to construct a secure, soundproof communications booth in the office of Administrator Scott Pruitt, according to government contracting records. 
 
 The agency signed a $24,570 contract earlier this summer with Acoustical Solutions, a Richmond-based company, for a “privacy booth for the administrator.” The company sells and installs an array of sound-dampening and privacy products, from ceiling baffles to full-scale enclosures like the one purchased by the EPA. The project’s scheduled completion date is Oct. 9, according to the contract. 
 
 Typically, such soundproof booths are used to conduct hearing tests. But the EPA sought a customized version — one that eventually would cost several times more than a typical model — that Pruitt can use to communicate privately. 
 
 “They had a lot of modifications,” said Steve Snider, an acoustic sales consultant with the company, who worked with the agency on its order earlier this summer. “Their main goal was they wanted essentially a secure phone booth that couldn’t be breached from a data point of view or from someone standing outside eavesdropping.” 
 
 [EPA chief Pruitt met with many corporate execs. Then he made decisions in their favor.] 
 
 No previous EPA administrators had such a setup. 
 
 “What you are referring to is a secured communication area in the administrator’s office so secured calls can be received and made,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in a statement. “Federal agencies need to have one of these so that secured communications, not subject to hacking from the outside, can be held. It’s called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). This is something which a number, if not all, Cabinet offices have and EPA needs to have updated.” 
 
 But according to former agency employees, the EPA has long maintained a SCIF on a separate floor from the administrator’s office, where officials with proper clearances can go to share information classified as secret. The agency did not specify what aspects of that facility were outdated, or whether the unit inside Pruitt’s office would meet the physical and technical specifications a SCIF generally is required to have. 
 
 In recent months, Pruitt and his top deputies have taken other steps aimed at heightening security. Some EPA employees have been asked to surrender their cellphones and other digital devices before meetings in the administrator’s office, in much the same way visitors do when visiting the president in the Oval Office. 
 
 A senior administration official, who asked not to be identified to discuss internal procedures, said that practice was instituted to ensure that employees are focused on the discussion during meetings. However, Bowman said that “if anyone was asked not to bring [phones], it was merely a professional courtesy — it is by no means a policy or directive.” 
 
 [Scott Pruitt says it’s not the time to talk climate change. For him, it never is.] 
 
 Pruitt also has shied away from using email at EPA, often preferring to deliver instructions verbally and hold face-to-face meetings. The shift stems in part from public disclosure by the New York Times in 2014 — following an open-records request of emails — of how Pruitt and other attorneys general had worked closely with the oil and gas industry to oppose Obama administration environmental safeguards. 
 
 Thousands more pages of emails from his time as Oklahoma’s attorney general, released earlier this year after the Center for Media and Democracy sued for them to be made public, detailed an often-chummy relationship between Pruitt’s office and Devon Energy, a major oil and gas exploration and production company based in Oklahoma City. 
 
 In addition, Pruitt has largely avoided the agency’s decades-long practice of publicly posting the administrator’s appointment calendars. Only last week were details on months worth of meetings released after media outlets filed repeated Freedom of Information Act requests for that information; they showed he has met regularly with corporate executives from the automobile, mining and fossil fuel industries — in several instances shortly before making decisions favorable to those interest groups. 
 
 Pruitt, who has become a polarizing and high-profile figure as he seeks to roll back Obama-era policies and shrink the EPA’s footprint, has essentially tripled the personal security detail that served past administrators. The detail now includes about 18 people to cover round-the-clock needs and his frequent travel schedule. Such 24/7 coverage has prompted officials to rotate in special agents from around the country who otherwise would be investigating environmental crimes. 
 
 Acoustical Solutions has done work for various government entities over the years, including building soundproof wall barriers at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and installing sound-damping wall and ceiling panels at the State Department, Agriculture Department and other agencies. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department turned to the company to provide a “sound enclosure” at the U.S. Mint in Denver. 
 
 Snider said the company also has installed numerous “audiometric” booths in other government agencies, such as Veterans Affairs, but those almost always are used for hearing tests. The EPA’s request was something different altogether, he said. 
 
 “This is a first,” he said. “They are definitely using this booth in a way that wasn’t necessarily intended. … [But] for the criteria they had, it fit this product.” 
 
 Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 At EPA, guarding the chief pulls agents from pursuing environmental crimes 
 
 EPA under Trump shrinks to near Reagan-era staffing levels 
 
 EPA will reconsider Obama-era safeguards on coal waste 
 
 Thousands of emails detail EPA head’s close ties to fossil fuel industry
– Scott Pruitt is no longer head of the Environmental Protection Agency, but the saga of his $43,000 phone booth isn't quite over. The Washington Post is out with one last financial tidbit courtesy of the Sierra Club, which sued the EPA to access records related to Pruitt. It learned, per Verizon phone logs, that Pruitt made a single outgoing call from the soundproof phone booth. The five-minute call was placed to the White House on Jan. 29. The EPA on Monday said it learned it couldn't provide the incoming call logs without subpoenaing Verizon, so any details on calls Pruitt may have received from the White House in the booth aren't available.