Esquire

Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Just Exposed Scott Pruitt as the Ultimate Swamp Creature

Even the president’s favorite network wasn’t buying his bullshit.

By Jack Holmes       April 5, 2018

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Scott Pruitt has raced to frontrunner status in our favorite new reality show, America’s Next Top Swampmonster.

Like others in President Trump’s supposedly swamp-draining cabinet, the EPA administrator was known as a big fan of flying first-class at incredible taxpayer expense. In one instance, he flew top-shelf from Washington, D.C. to New York—a four-hour drive—for a mere $1,600. But this week, we learned Pruitt had designs on being captain of this cabinet’s Blue Angels, as EPA explored leasing a private jet for Pruitt on a monthly basis. It would have cost a mere $100,000 in taxpayer cash each month, according to The Washington Post, and so was abandoned.

That little bit of public service was obscured, however, by two more episodes in Pruitt’s No Good, Very Bad Week and a Half. The Atlantic reported Pruitt went to the White House seeking raises for two longtime aides he brought with him from the Oklahoma attorney general’s office. When the request was denied, Pruitt allegedly used an obscure provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to grant the raises anyway—to the tune of over 20-grand and 50-grand respectively. Pruitt now denies any knowledge of the raises, and had them peeled back this week after they went public.

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And finally, there’s the condo. ABC News broke the news that Pruitt got a sweetheart deal from the wife of a Washington lobbyist to rent a posh apartment, situated on prime D.C. real estate just steps from the Capitol, for just $50 a night. This is far below market rate. And Pruitt paid only when he stayed there. Considering the lobbyist in question represents ExxonMobil, among a host of other firms, this is a bit of obvious swampitude—to the point that even Fox News can’t abide it.

Pruitt sought comfort inside the president’s favorite television network Wednesday evening, but to his credit, correspondent Ed Henry pulled no punches and left Pruitt squirming and stammering in his chair:

Pruitt has done more interviews with Fox than all other networks combined, mostly because they’ll swallow his sell lines about the virtues of rolling back every environmental regulation, ever. This week, that included trashing a rule aimed at curbing vehicle emissions, perhaps to protect Americans’ freedom to inhale more smog. But Henry put Pruitt on the back foot throughout, starting with an exchange over the raises:

HENRY: You don’t know? You run the agency. You don’t know who did this?

PRUITT: I found out about this yesterday, and I corrected the action.

Pruitt throwing his staff under the bus is no surprise—he is, after all, a Trumpist. (Ben Carson threw his own wife under the bus.) But it doesn’t pass the laugh test that two of his closest aides got raises that proved extraordinary in more ways than one and Pruitt didn’t know a thing about it.

But then came the condo:

HENRY: President Trump said he would drain the swamp. Is draining the swamp renting an apartment from the wife of a Washington lobbyist?

PRUITT: I don’t think that that’s remotely fair to ask that question.

That just about says it all. Pruitt not only believes the rules don’t apply to him—he gets legitimately indignant when asked to be accountable to the public.

That didn’t shake Henry, though, and neither did Pruitt’s line about how the lease had been approved by EPA ethics officials. Henry reminded him that Pruitt only sought that approval when the cozy arrangement went public in the last week—months and months after it all went down. Pruitt did not care whether it abided by ethics rules until he was forced to. And then Henry got the administrator to admit he only paid for the apartment on nights he was staying there, the benefits of which the Fox host was forced to spell out to Pruitt:

HENRY: Your house in Oklahoma, you pay a mortgage on that. And when you don’t sleep there, you still pay the mortgage, right?

PRUITT: Not when I’m not using it. I mean, yes. This is a tremendous difference. I wasn’t using the facility, uh, Ed, when I wasn’t there.

Notice Pruitt’s cagey default reaction is just to make something up. No, I don’t pay my mortgage when I’m not there—wait, yes I do! He then explained that he wasn’t using the apartment when he wasn’t there, which is true and also has no bearing on the ethics.

The fact is Pruitt got a sweetheart deal on Washington real estate from the wife of a lobbyist, and at least one of that lobbyist’s clients got approval for a project from the EPA. This is a conflict of interest, an ethics disaster, and perfectly on-brand for the Trump administration.

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Pruitt has always transparently operated on behalf of special interests. The New York Times got hold of his schedule book and found it filled with fancy dinners and expensive lunches with representatives from—and lobbyists for—the industries the EPA is tasked with regulating. Pruitt had a top-secret secure phone booth installed in his offices at the agency so that his communications couldn’t be monitored. It was supposed to cost $25,000 in taxpayer cash, but ended up at over $43,000. That was spent presumably so that Pruitt can more effectively Protect the Environment, and definitely not so he can coordinate with those same lobbyists and industry types.

Of all the swamp monsters summoned forth by the Trump Era, Pruitt may well be the most diabolical. He was party to a baker’s dozen of lawsuits against the EPA at the time he was nominated to lead it. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he received a letter from a prominent energy company complaining about EPA regulations, then stamped his letterhead on it and sent it on to the EPA as official correspondence from this office.

Since becoming the head of the EPA, he has rolled back every regulation in sight, including the Clean Power Plan, which is the United States’ main initiative to comply with the Paris Climate Accords.

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That ought to be the most damning dimension of his legacy, along with whatever harm he brings to the quality of air and water in the United States. One wonders how many more Flints there will be by the time Pruitt leaves office. Instead, his obvious swampitude will probably hold the public’s attention.

Pruitt believes he should be free to act however he pleases as a public official, feeding special interests and living in style on the taxpayer dime. That much is clear from the interview. Even worse: He is insulted when you dare ask him why. It’s not just the environment—the very principle of holding public servants accountable is under threat right now. Props to Ed Henry for keeping the tradition alive.

Daily Beast – Toxic Asset

Scott Pruitt Says His Lobbyist Landlord’s Clients Didn’t Have Business Before the EPA. They Did.

The EPA chief’s defense of his sweetheart rental is lacking some basic facts.

Sam Stein, Lachlan Markay     April 5, 2018

As he doggedly tries to save his job amid a mounting ethics scandal, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has insisted that there was no formal or informal conflict of interest when he rented a room from high-profile Washington D.C lobbyist, J. Steven Hart.

“Mr. Hart,” Pruitt claimed in an recent interview with Fox News on Wednesday, “has no clients who have business before this agency.”

A review of lobbying disclosure forms and publicly-listed EPA records, however, suggests that Pruitt is either lying or is woefully unfamiliar with the operations of his own agency.

Far from being removed from any EPA-related interests, Hart was personally representing a natural gas company, an airline giant, and a major manufacturer that had business before the agency at the time he was also renting out a room to Pruitt. One of his clients is currently battling the EPA in court over an order to pay more than $100 million in environmental cleanup costs.

The New York Times previously reported that Hart’s firm, Williams & Jensen, represented a company that got a pipeline expansion project approved by the EPA. But that only scratches the surface of Hart’s deep involvement in the energy industry—and advocacy on behalf of clients with business before the agency that his one-time tenant leads.

Hart himself was part of a team of four Williams & Jensen lobbyists that has reported lobbying Pruitt’s EPA. They did so on behalf of Owens-Illinois, a glass bottle manufacturer that paid $39 million in 2012 to settle EPA allegations of widespread Clean Air Act violations by a subsidiary. In June 2017, while Pruitt lived at Hart’s DC condo, another of the company’s subsidiaries settled additional EPA allegations that it violated the same law.

“We know that Steven Hart’s firm had clients before the EPA,” said Craig Holman, Government Affairs Lobbyist for the good-government group Public Citizen. “So his insistence that there is no conflict of interest is just off the wall.”

Steven Hart Lobbying Form

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Even clients of Hart’s who didn’t enlist him to lobby the EPA directly had at least tangential business before the agency.

Among them is industrial equipment manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker, which is currently in litigation with the EPA over its own environmental liabilities. In 2014, the EPA ordered the company to pay $104 million in cleanup costs at a super-fund site in Rhode Island. Black & Decker disputed the ruling, but estimated in its most recent annual shareholder report, it expects that it may eventually have to pay between $68 million and $140 million in remediation costs at the site. The case is currently working its way through federal court, an EPA official confirmed to The Daily Beast. And Pruitt himself has directly weighed in on the matter, elevating the super-fund site as a target for immediate and intense attention.

Hart’s other clients include Cheniere Energy, which as Fox’s Ed Henry noted operates liquified natural gas terminals on the Gulf Coast and is reportedly one of the best positioned companies for Pruitt’s American gas export campaign. “Steve has never represented them,” Pruitt insisted to Henry.

In fact, lobbying disclosure records show that Hart has personally represented Cheniere since Williams & Jensen signed the company as a client in 2004.

In a separate interview with The Daily Signal, the news arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, Pruitt claimed that “[Hart’s] firm represents these [energy industry] clients, not him. There has been no connection whatsoever in that regard.”

In fact, Hart represents numerous firms in the energy space, in addition to Cheniere. Black & Decker subsidiary Stanley Oil and Gas “provides world-class pipeline services and equipment in more than 100 countries, offshore and onshore,” according to its website. Another Hart client, Smithfield Foods, manufactures energy through the use of animal waste collected at its hog production facilities. Hart’s lobbying on behalf of the company routinely includes advocacy on energy policy issues.

Other Hart clients have had business before the EPA on either ceremonial or non-energy related matters. Hart represents the Coca-Cola Company, which has landfill and bottling operations that have fallen under the EPA’s purview. Hart represents United Airlines, which is involved in an aircraft drinking rule program for which the EPA—while Pruitt was staying at Hart’s condo—issued self-inspection requirements. And until December 31 of last year, Hart represented the American Automotive Policy Council, a trade group formed by Chrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors; automakers that have numerous policy interests the overlap with the chief environmental protection agency in America.

A request for comment to Hart was not returned seeking clarity as to what, if anything, he did to advance his clients interests before the EPA. In some cases, however, it is clear that his clients fared poorly. This past week, for example, Pruitt announced that he would be rolling back Obama-era car emissions standards, a policy that both Ford and GM have been vocal about not supporting, as one plugged-in Hill source explained.

The EPA did not return a request for comment.

Vanity Fair – U.S.

Can Scott Pruitt Poison the Environment Enough to Save His Job?

Bess Levin, Vanity Fair            April 5, 2018 

The future of Trump’s favorite polluter looks hazy.

The past couple months have been less than ideal for pollution enthusiast Scott Pruitt. At first, headlines about his expensive (taxpayer-funded) travel habit were mostly indistinguishable from similar scandals plaguing other Trump administration Cabinet members. More recently, however, negative stories about the anti-E.P.A. administrator have been tumbling out of his agency on a near daily basis. In the past week alone, we learned that Pruitt was living in a top lobbyist’s D.C. townhouse for just 50 bucks a night—when similar accommodations would have set him back several multiples of that rate—and just happened to approve a deal for one of his landlord’s water-polluting clients to expand a pipeline project after it had the distinction of receiving the second-biggest fine in the history of the Clean Water Act. On Monday, word leaked to The Washington Post that Pruitt’s staff had considered leasing a $100,000-a-month private jet to accommodate his luxe “travel needs”; on Tuesday, sources whispered to The Atlantic that Pruitt had bypassed the White House to give substantial pay raises to two of his closest aides.

Up until recently, it appeared that Pruitt’s job, if not safe, was at least as secure as anyone else’s in an administration in which casual corruption is a venial sin and job security hinges on the whim of a mostly unhinged president. By Wednesday, however, the White House’s stance on the Pruitt Situation seemed to have shifted markedly. For the first time, spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said publicly that “The president’s not” O.K. with the E.P.A. chief‘s actions. She also declined to confirm reports that Trump rang up Pruitt in recent days to offer support. “We’re reviewing the situation. When we have had the chance to have a deeper dive on it we’ll let you know the outcomes of that,” Sanders added. “But we’re currently reviewing that here at the White House.” To those familiar with the roundabout way that Donald Trump slowly exfoliates aides who become irritants, the chilly response looked like a kiss of death.

Perhaps recognizing the gravity of his situation, Pruitt attempted to control the damage Wednesday, with mixed results. “I’m dumbfounded that that’s controversial,” he told the Washington Examiner, referring to his lobbyist-sponsored living situation. Asked by Fox News if the arrangement contradicted Trump’s pledge to “drain the swamp,” Pruitt acted shocked: “I don’t think that that’s even remotely fair to ask that question.” In other interviews, he suggested that the leaks are part of a liberal plot against him, with his enemies willing to “resort to anything” to stop him from deconstructing Obama’s environmental regulatory regime. Speaking to The Washington Times, Pruitt said he was under attack by a “bastion of liberalism,” which apparently forced him to sign a rental agreement that virtually anyone could’ve told him was ethically problematic at best. In Axios, an unnamed Pruitt defender appeared to channel his view of the world, telling the outlet that “this is really about ideology, driven by folks on the left who don’t like” his agenda, and that the bad press is allegedly coming from a recently dismissed political appointee. (That person, when contacted by Politico, denied the accusations and suggested that the E.P.A. is trying to deflect attention by attacking people who have questioned Pruitt’s decisions.)

Over at the White House, Chief of Staff John Kelly is said to be extremely miffed he wasn’t warned in advance that Trump’s E.P.A. head was a ticking time bomb, telling Pruitt in a phone call that “the flow of negative and damning stories needed to stop.” “[It] was not a friendly buck-up call at all,” is how one administration official described the chat to the Daily Beast. Yet for all the major lapses in judgment—practically a job requirement for Trump staffers, given their track record—Pruitt still has one thing going for him: he’s been the most “effective” member of Trump’s Cabinet, which in this case means he’s proven especially adept at gutting the agency he was tasked with running 14 months back. Trump may not appreciate the negative attention Pruitt is getting—and he certainly hates the positive attention, such as a New York Times headline last month, “Scott Pruitt, Trump’s Rule-Cutting E.P.A. Chief, Plots His Political Future”—but he loves what Pruitt has done for his industry pals. “As long as [Trump] feels Pruitt is effective and on his side, he’s probably fine,” one source close to the administration told the Daily Beast.

Pruitt, for his part, made sure to lay things on particularly thick while announcing the rollback of Obama’s car emissions rules this week. “This president has shown tremendous courage to say to the American people that America is going to be put first,” he said at the gathering. With the rollbacks, Pruitt added, “the president is again saying America is going to be put first.” Time will tell whether Pruitt is still around by the time those rules go into effect.