Who better to run the Environmental Protection Agency than an unprincipled, anti-environment, climate science denier who had sued the agency 14 times when he was attorney general of Oklahoma?
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty.
The New York Times reported that Pruitt initiated the EPA’s “largest regulatory rollback” in history, which included “a suite of historic regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants.”
When Pruitt moved to Washington, D.C., to become EPA administrator, he leased a condominium at a deeply discounted rate from the wife of a prominent lobbyist whose clients were regulated by the EPA. He violated laws by flying first-class when he traveled back and forth from Oklahoma. He also charged taxpayers for first-class trips outside the country, including Morocco.
The Times reported that Pruitt asked aides to contact Dan Cathy, chief executive officer of Chick-fil-A to help Pruitt’s wife open a franchise of the restaurant chain.
Pruitt was so blatant in his disregard for ethics and laws that he was investigated by the GOP-run House Oversight Committee.
The Atlantic reported that Pruitt gave significant raises to two of his top aides even though the White House had denied the raises.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/04/politics/scott-pruitt-fox-interview/index.html
Ed Henry of Fox News asked Pruitt who was responsible.
Henry: So, is somebody being fired for that?
Pruitt: That should not have been done. And it may be —
Henry: So, who did it?
Pruitt: There will be some accountability.
Henry: A career person or a political person?
Pruitt: I’ll have to — I don’t know. I don’t know who’s —
Henry: You don’t know? You run the agency. You don’t know who did this?
This interview was shocking in two ways.
One, someone at Fox News was practicing journalism.
Two, and this will really shock you, Pruitt knew who approved the raises.
“Are you embarrassed?” Henry asked.
By early July 2018, Pruitt was under at least 14 federal investigations by the Government Accounting Office, the EPA inspector general, the White House Office of Office of Management and Budget, and the GOP-run House Oversight Committee involving his conflict of interests, spending habits, and management practices.
Trump demanded Pruitt’s resignation letter after he learned of a news story that said that Pruitt had asked Trump to fire attorney general Jeff Sessions and appoint him to run the Justice Department.
Pruitt resigned in early July. Trump thanked him his “outstanding job” and selected the agency’s deputy, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, to become interim administrator.
In his resignation letter, Pruitt said he was forced to resign because of “unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.”
