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There are few officials in the Trump administration who’ve delivered wins to the president like Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
While steadily carrying out the conservative agenda to undo environmental regulations, he’s managed to stay on the president’s good side, lavishing praise and providing him with great photo ops. As a result, Pruitt has been one of Trump’s favorite Cabinet members.
But Pruitt now is facing a stunning number of ethics scandals — most recently a report that his full-time, 20-person security detail has cost taxpayers millions of dollars — that just keep spiraling and getting worse. And speculation about a possible resignation continues to hover around him.
At least three House Republicans have called for Pruitt to be fired or to resign. At least five requests for investigations of Pruitt have been made to the EPA’s inspector general in just the past week. And 11 environmental groups have a Boot Pruitt campaign underway with ad buys on Fox & Friends.
But several other Republican leaders — including Sen. Ted Cruz — are rallying behind him.
This is compelling. Why do Obama and his media cronies want so badly to drive @EPAScottPruitt out of office? @realDonaldTrump is too cagey to be duped and bullied by the Obama groupies. https://t.co/USHqDUDECH
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 5, 2018
Trump himself tweeted Friday Pruitt “is doing a great job but is TOTALLY under siege.”
To understand just how much hot water Pruitt may be in, first we need to understand the seriousness of his alleged ethical breaches so far.
A too-good-to-be-true deal on a condo rental
On March 29, ABC News broke the story that Pruitt received a terrific deal on a rental townhouse less than a block from the Capitol building, at 223 C Street, Northeast, for the first six months he lived in DC in 2017. The problem is the property belongs in part to the wife of a high-profile lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, who also contributed to Pruitt’s political campaigns and has as his client Cheniere Energy, the only liquefied natural gas exporter in the continental United States. His wife, Vicki Hart, is a health care lobbyist.
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Oh, and Pruitt was billed just $50 a night, and only for the nights he was there, paying $6,100 for six months. His daughter McKenna Pruitt, who was a White House intern at the time, lived there too. It’s unclear whether she paid any rent. The place was also used to host GOP fundraisers.
A big problem here is not only whether this was ethical, but whether the EPA ethically got approval from its ethics office. After the news of the housing arrangement broke, the EPA hastily put together a memo from its ethics office saying the situation was halal.
Justina Fugh, an ethics official who initially signed off on the memo, told Zahra Hijri at BuzzFeed that she wasn’t told about all of the relevant details and was too credulous when Pruitt’s aides pressed her approval.
“I received a phone call at 8:45 pm on Thursday. I was at the movie theater,” she told BuzzFeed. “I had to step out and I assumed they were providing me all relevant circumstances.”
During his stay, Pruitt took off one afternoon to nap. His full-time security detail (more on that later) was concerned something was amiss and broke down the glass-paneled door of his rental property to check on him. The EPA then reimbursed the property for $2,460 for damages.
According to the original EPA memo, “If the space was utilized for one 30-day month, then the rental cost would be $1,500, which is a reasonable market price.” It’s not. The median rate in the area for just a one-bedroom rental is $1,995, according to Rentometer. Zillow estimates that the property next door has a mortgage payment of $3,526 per month. And Pruitt’s bill of $6,100 over six months actually works out to $33 per day and $1,017 per month.
And Politico reported that Pruitt was slow to pay his rent, forcing his landlord to bug him for payment.
The revised memo still doesn’t answer key questions, like whether Pruitt had access to facilities beyond his room and whether his daughter paid rent. Norman Eisen, who worked in the White House ethics office under President Obama, voiced skepticism on Twitter:
This after the fact justification of Pruitt’s sweet housing deal w/lobbyist’s wife is just out and out fraud. Do you notice that the original ethics official they relied on (Justine) no longer has her name on here? Wonder why. We r not dropping this, right @waltshaub @RWPUSA? https://t.co/XwVFcT2iDK
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) April 2, 2018
On Tuesday, Pruitt told the Washington Examiner he was “dumbfounded that that’s controversial.” But the White House is now conducting an inquiry.
This whole imbroglio stands out because of the favors that appear to have been exchanged here between Pruitt and someone with ties to the industry his agency regulates.
Think about it: if a govt official abuses his office by taking a fancy trip, taxpayers lose the expense of that trip. But if he accepts what amount to kickbacks from corporations who can benefit from his actions, the cost can be far larger 2/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) March 30, 2018
In March 2017, the EPA approved a natural gas pipeline extension from a company represented by Hart’s firm, Williams & Jensen, while Pruitt was living in Hart’s wife’s property.
And in December, Pruitt jetted off to Morocco to pitch “the potential benefit of liquified natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy,” flying in first class with his head of security and another staffer.
This leads us to our next scandal.
Expensive travel
Pruitt’s Morocco trip was one of his most expensive, but it wasn’t his only travel extravagance. Between military, charter, and first-class flights, Pruitt spent more than $168,000 on air travel in his first year in office, even when internal emails showed cheaper options were available.
And he doesn’t travel alone. Pruitt and his entourage, including aides and security staffers, racked up $90,000 in just one week last summer. The administrator frequently travels from DC to Oklahoma, where he also takes charter flights.
The EPA has said Pruitt travels first class due to security risks, but Pruitt himself has said he rides in the front of the plane to avoid uncivil travelers. EPA staff claimed Pruitt had a blanket waiver to fly first class but walked that back when reminded that government travel rules prohibit such an exemption.
And revealingly, the Associated Press reported on Friday that when Pruitt traveled to Oklahoma on his own dime to attend football games, he flew coach, showing that Pruitt was willing to tolerate the supposed security risk when he was paying out of his own pocket.
Some of this travel is official EPA business, but some of Pruitt’s travel has been for media appearances and some for recreation. Pruitt also has expensive taste in hotels, having stayed in high-priced rooms in Paris and New York.
EPA staff have tried to argue that previous administrators also went on expensive international trips. But what’s different about Pruitt is that he flew first class on domestic flights. He has pledged to fly coach from now on, as past EPA administrators have traveled.
Paranoia
Since taking office, Pruitt has displayed some odd paranoia about his security. Shortly after starting his new job, he spent $3,000 to sweep his office for surveillance bugs. He then spent $5,800 to install biometric locks with fingerprint readers.
He also spent more than $42,000 to build a secret phone booth in his office. He hides his schedule from the public. His own employees need an escort to see him and aren’t allowed to take notes at meetings.
Most notably, Pruitt has surrounded himself with an unprecedented round-the-clock security detail that has accompanied him on trips to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl. The Associated Press reported that Pruitt’s security detail costs taxpayers $3 million.
And on Thursday, we also learned from the New York Times that Pruitt made other extraordinary requests of his security team: He wanted to “use flashing lights and sirens in his motorcade ... to expedite local trips in Washington to the airport or to dinner, including at least one trip to Le Diplomate, a trendy French restaurant that he frequented.”
Questionable hiring and demoting
Pruitt said one of his highest priorities at the EPA is the Superfund program, a federal initiative to clean up highly contaminated sites throughout the country.
Naturally, he’d want someone he can rely on to run the show. And that’s why he picked a guy he owes money to.
Albert Kelly, an Oklahoma banker, lent Pruitt money to buy a home and a minor league baseball team. Kelly was later banned from working in the banking sector for life by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and faced $125,000 in fines.
He now collects a $172,000 salary from the EPA as a senior adviser to the administrator. His résumé lists no experience in environmental management but mentions “political activity” as one of his core competencies.
Pruitt has also let staffers at the EPA keep their political consulting side gigs. And the Atlantic reported that two agency staffers from Oklahoma close to Pruitt got raises totaling $84,000 using funds appropriated under the Safe Drinking Water Act — without approval from the White House. (Pruitt told Fox News on Wednesday he hadn’t been aware of the raises and has “corrected it.”)
And the New York Times reported Thursday that in 2017, Pruitt reassigned or demoted several officials after they expressed concern about some of his spending choices and management style.
Trump still won’t unfriend Pruitt
Pruitt is hardly the most egregious offender in the Cabinet in some of these areas — former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin both racked up travel bills topping $1 million.
And even amid the bad press, Pruitt continued to run up the score for Trump this week, announcing a revision of fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks. The decision is a win for US auto manufacturers who were struggling to meet the stringent targets.
And so far Trump is willing to defend him. “You know, I just left coal and energy country,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “They love Scott Pruitt. They feel very strongly about Scott Pruitt. And they love Scott Pruitt.”
Pruitt said the recent scrutiny for his travels and housing comes from people opposed to his agenda at the EPA trying to stop him. “And do I think that they will resort to anything to achieve that? Yes,” Pruitt told the Washington Examiner. “It’s toxic here in that regard.”
