ABC News

EXCLUSIVE: More Cabinet trouble for Trump? EPA chief lived in condo tied to lobbyist ‘power couple’

By John Santucci, Matthew Mosk, Stephanie Ebbs    March 29, 2018

Scott Pruitt: Everything you need to know

For much of his first year in Washington, President Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show.

Neither the EPA nor the lobbyist, J. Steven Hart, would say how much Pruitt paid to live at the prime Capitol Hill address, though Hart said he believed it to be the market rate. The price tag on Pruitt’s rental arrangement is one key question when determining if it constitutes an improper gift, ethics experts told ABC News.

ABC News. A townhouse near the U.S. Capitol where EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt is said to have stayed. The building is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show. more +

“I think it certainly creates a perception problem, especially if Mr. Hart is seeking to influence the agency,” said Bryson Morgan, the former investigative counsel at the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics. “That’s why there is a gift rule.”

Hart confirmed to ABC News in a brief interview that Pruitt had lived in the flat, which is owned by a limited liability company that links to an address listed to Hart and his wife Vicki Hart, a lobbyist with expertise in the healthcare arena. Steven Hart said Vicki Hart co-owns the condo. He said his wife was not the majority owner, but would not identify her partners.

“I have no ownership interest,” he said. “Obviously, I know the owners.”

Vicki Hart does no lobbying involving the EPA, her husband said. Her website says she previously worked as a senior health policy advisor for two Senate Majority Leaders before establishing her firm in 2002.

Steven Hart served in the Reagan Justice Department and became, according to his website, is one of the nation’s top fundraisers, donating more than $110,000 to Republican political candidates and committees last election cycle, records show.

In 2010, the newspaper Roll Call referred to the Harts as a “lobbyist power couple.”

Mr. Hart is the chairman and CEO of Williams and Jensen, a firm that reported more than $16 million in federal lobbying income in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Among his many clients are the NRA, for whom he serves as outside legal counsel.

Just last year, Cheniere Energy Inc. reported paying Hart’s firm $80,000.

Hart’s firm specifically lobbied on “issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG), approval of LNG exports and export facilities.” The firm also lists on its website that it lobbies on other EPA policies like the Clean Air Act.

EPA spent almost $118,000 on Scott Pruitt’s flights, many of them first class

Environmental groups launch ads on Fox & Friends to ‘boot Pruitt’

EPA chief Scott Pruitt defends Italy trip after increased scrutiny of travel costs

Cheniere Energy Inc. owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time. Liquid natural gas exports was on the agenda for discussion during Pruitt’s December 2017 trip to Morocco, according to an agency press release.

On the trip, Pruitt pitched “the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy,” the release said.

Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, right, meets with Moroccan Minister of Energy, Mines and Sustainable Development, Aziz Rabbah during a trip to Morocco in December of 2017. more +

The revelations about Pruitt’s living situation come as more questions are being raised by members of Congress about his travel habits. The Morocco trip was one of Pruitt’s most expensive. ABC News has learned that Pruitt, his head of security, and an additional member of his staff, Samantha Dravis, all flew first class on the trip.

The EPA inspector general expanded an audit of Pruitt’s travel to include the Morocco trip in response to a request from Sen. Tom Carper, the ranking Democrat on a committee with oversight of EPA. Carper specifically asked the agency watchdog to look into whether Pruitt’s activities on the trip were “in line with EPA’s mission ‘to protect human health and the environment.”

Both environmental groups and members of Congress pointed out that the jurisdiction over natural gas exports typically falls to the Department of Energy – not the EPA.

Obtained by ABC News. A photo obtained by ABC News shows EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt deplaning a military-owned plane in June 2017 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. more +

A spokeswoman for Cheniere Energy declined to comment.

Another lobbying client of Hart’s, the railroad Norfolk Southern, spent $160,000 last year on lobbying Congress on “issues affecting coal usage, oil production, and transportation, including EPA regulation.”

Norfolk Southern also declined to comment when reached by ABC News.

Morgan, an ethics expert in private practice in Washington, D.C., said the lobbying connection only further muddies the living arrangement. He said the rental agreement could create ethics problems for Pruitt even if he did reimburse his landlord for rent.

“What are the terms of the rental agreement?” Morgan asked. “It’s not just a question if he is paying market rent. Was he given the ability to end it immediately? Would someone come after him if he were not to pay rent?”

Morgan said the most recent guidance from the Office of Government Ethics “emphasized that executive branch officials should decline even a permissible gift if it could cause the public to question their integrity or impartiality.”

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox declined to answer questions about the arrangement.

Vicki Hart reached on her cell phone, said she would call back to discuss the matter but never did.

Steven Hart declined to address details of the rental agreement, saying it was a private matter and up to Pruitt to decide whether they should be made public.

The White House has not responded to a request for comment from ABC News.

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Ali Dukakis contributed to this report

CNN

Why I blew the whistle on the Rick Perry meeting

By Simon Edelman      March 29, 2018

Simon Edelman is the former Department of Energy chief creative officer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) I was fired from my job as Department of Energy chief creative officer for releasing public domain photos of a meeting between Rick Perry, secretary of energy, and Robert Murray, CEO of Ohio-based Murray Energy, a large US coal company. There was no classified information present, I didn’t engage with either of them and I didn’t interrupt their conversation.

The pictures showed Murray, who donated $300,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, give Perry an “action plan.” Murray’s company has previously lobbied the Trump administration to end new federal public health protections for greenhouse gas emissions and smog pollution, loosen mine safety rules, and cut the staff of the Environmental Protection Agency by “at least half.”

                                                                  Simon Edelman

Perry and Murray shook hands, hugged and agreed to get it done. Then they kept everything that happened that day a secret.

If this raises a few flags for you, then you understand the predicament I was in when I was still employed at DOE in March 2017. I thought about it and decided to release the photos and the story to the public, after which I was placed on leave and then fired. My personal laptop was seized (though it was recently returned to me), and I was subjected to intimidation tactics from DOE staff.

Some of the policies Murray’s company has advocated for have been faithfully executed without research, thoughtful public comment periods or policy input from public health professionals. President Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate that cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions globally, and his administration gave notice of repealing the landmark Clean Power Plan, which reduced greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants nationwide. The Trump administration attempted to delay, but was eventually forced to proceed due to lawsuits, clean air protections against smog pollution. The President also nominated a coal company consultantto oversee national mine safety and began cutting EPA scientists and other career agency staffers in droves.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry reviews Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray’s “action plan.”

Additionally, during this time, the rapidly growing clean energy industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people was also relegated to a footnote through cuts to solar and wind energy research and shifts in focus to fossil fuel development. Perry also tried, unsuccessfully, to manipulate the energy market by attempting to force electricity customers to pay billions of extra dollars to prop up uneconomic coal plants that were ready for retirement. Not surprisingly, the news reports and industry analysts found that the coal plants that would benefit the most from Perry’s manipulation attempt would be ones supplied by Murray’s coal mines.

But that’s not even the worst of it. At that same meeting, Andrew Wheeler, the nominee for the number two position at the Environmental Protection Agency, was present. Prior to his nomination, Wheeler spent much of his career as a mining lobbyist, where he worked for Murray and other mining interests in Washington, fighting to shape clean air and water protections in his clients’ favor.

In addition to Wheeler’s past relationship with Murray, it’s also been reported that he proactively fundraised last year for two senators on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This committee is responsible for determining Wheeler’s fitness for the EPA and voting to bring his nomination to the Senate floor, making Wheeler’s confirmation out of committee along partisan lines last month a potential conflict of interest.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray meet.

If he is confirmed by the entire Senate, he will likely vigorously try to prop up the coal industry in the same ways Perry has, despite the fact the coal industry has been in a tailspin for the past decade. The United States has rapidly been transitioning to cleaner, cheaper resources like solar, wind and energy efficiency, while coal plants are being retired due to their costs and pollution.

With full knowledge of these market realities, however, Wheeler, Murray and the Trump administration are adamant on using taxpayer funds to create rules to prop them up — and for releasing some photos that highlighted this fact, I was let go.

I showed the public what I felt they were entitled to see and now believe we need to do more to hold the Trump administration accountable. We cannot turn back time and undo a meeting that’s already been done, but Congress does have an opportunity to limit the extent to which fossil fuel billionaires and D.C. lobbyists influences our government’s policies.

Some good first steps would be delving into the governmental access given to coal, oil and fracked gas executives and rejecting the nomination of Wheeler when it comes to the floor of the Senate for a final vote.

Rick Perry fired me for exposing the truth about how energy policy was being made under the Trump administration. Now it’s up to Congress to hold him and this administration accountable.

Editor’s Note: DOE spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Edelman’s firing, but she did reiterate her earlier statement to CNN, saying Edelman’s conclusions about the significance of the Perry-Murray meeting were “ridiculous” and that Edelman’s statements are “based on his own subjective opinions and personal agenda.”

ABC News

Critics concerned Pruitt could limit the type of science EPA can cite

By Stephanie Ebbs     March 27, 2018

                                                                                        EPA plans to roll back major Obama-era climate rule

The former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and other critics say they worry EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is considering a rule change that would require researchers to make more of their methodology and raw data public — a move which could impact regulations intended to limit pollution, among other consequences.

Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wrote that the move would “paralyze” the agency in an op-ed in The New York Times.

“This approach would undermine the nation’s scientific credibility. And should Mr. Pruitt reconsider regulations now in place, this new policy could be a catalyst for the unraveling of existing public health protections if the studies used to justify them could no longer be used by EPA,” McCarthy and Janet McCabe, a former administrator in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times.

David Doniger, senior strategic director for the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that the main target of this policy is a set of studies that began in the 1990s and were cited as the basis for public health standards like regulations of soot and other tiny particles of pollution that are linked to respiratory issues like asthma.

He said the administration wants to disqualify that research.

“This is diabolical because if Pruitt follows through he would toss out this body of work because the patient records weren’t made totally public so that your health status and your personal experience and all that for 20,000 or more people could be pored over by industry hacks and people wouldn’t participate in these studies,” Doniger said in an interview with ABC News.

Critics say a new policy requiring raw data to be completely public could threaten rules intended to protect public health because they rely on research that involves summarizing individuals’ personal medical information. In those studies, scientists followed individuals for years on the condition that none of the personal health information would be shared. E&E News first reported last week that Pruitt was working on the plan and discussed it in a meeting at the Heritage Foundation.

But the EPA says those characterizations are too narrow and that Pruitt is looking more broadly at how to make the science cited by the agency more transparent. They said there has not been any announcement or change in policy at this time.

“Administrator Pruitt believes that Americans deserve transparency, with regard to the science and data that’s underpinning regulatory decisions being made by this Agency,” EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in a statement.

Pruitt’s goal is similar to what House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, proposed in his Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017, nicknamed the HONEST Act. That bill would have blocked the EPA from crafting any rule unless all scientific and technical information was available to the public “in a manner sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results.”

Scott J. Ferrell/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images, FILE. Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, listens during the House Judiciary hearing on medical liability issues.

That bill passed the House in 2017 but was blocked in a Senate committee.

EPA documents, including Pruitt’s schedules recently obtained by ABC News through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that he met with Smith on April 5 of last year and that the topics for discussion included the agency’s scientific advisory boards and the HONEST Act.

The EPA said that the HONEST Act has the same goal of transparency Pruitt is looking into but did not offer specifics about conversations between Smith and Pruitt.

Smith’s spokespeople did not respond to ABC News’ question about whether he requested the policy change.

EPA blocks some scientists from serving on advisory boards

Smith has been a vocal critic of existing climate science and said in a statement that the HONEST Act would allow the public to independently determine whether data supports the EPA’s conclusions.

“Administrator Pruitt feels strongly that Americans deserve to see the underlying data, and the American people will appreciate his efforts to make sure regulations are based on good science, not science fiction,” Smith said in a statement.

Virginia Rep. Don Beyer, the co-ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, criticized statements that Pruitt wanted to increase transparency on Twitter:

Rep. Don Beyer: Pruitt’s new desire for “transparency” is bogus.
Pruitt runs the EPA with profound secrecy to prevent the public from uncovering his waste of taxpayer funds and frequent talks with polluters about how to undermine public health safeguards.

This is about attacking science. Again https://twitter.com/LFFriedman/status/978402524196687872 …

And a representative of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists tweeted last week that the proposal is a “trojan horse” to restrict science at the agency:

Yogin Kothari: @EPAScottPruitt “secret science” plan would sever the @EPA’s ability to rely on science in making public health and environmental decisions. It’s a Trojan Horse with the intention of replacing science with politics https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scott-pruitt-will-restrict-epas-use-of-legitimate-science/ …      See Yogin Kothari’s other Tweets

One of the biggest points of concern with the proposal is that a lot of regulations intended to limit pollution like smog are based on public health research that relies heavily on summarized data based on personal health information.

The HONEST Act would have required that public datasets redact personal information. The EPA has not yet released details of any upcoming policy change.

A cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Air Act, for example, cites research that reducing particulate matter could prevent 230,000 premature deaths in the year 2020.

Another study on the EPA’s website found that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could prevent between 1.4 million and 3 million premature deaths in the year 2100.

Supporters of Smith’s bill and moves to increase access to data cited by EPA say that they question some of those findings and want researchers to provide more of the raw data so anyone can try to replicate the conclusions.

Steve Milloy, who served on Trump’s EPA transition team and is a vocal critic of what he calls “junk science,” wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that there were questions about the original research the EPA used to regulate particulate matter and that an analysis of public health data released by the state of California found that particulate matter was not associated with death.

“The best part is that if you don’t believe the result, you can get the same data for yourself from California and run your own analysis. Then we’ll compare, contrast and debate. That’s how science is supposed to work,” Milloy wrote in the op-ed tweeted out by an EPA spokesperson.

McCarthy and McCabe also wrote that any limits on the use of these kinds of public health studies at EPA could also impact rulemaking at other agencies that rely on health-related research, including the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals.

“The E.P.A. administrator simply can’t make determinations on what science is appropriate in rule-making without calling into question decisions by other federal agencies based on similar kinds of studies, including on the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals, and research into cancer and other diseases. All rely to some extent on data from individual health records. If one agency rejects studies based on that sort of data, it could open up policies by other agencies based on similar studies to challenge,” they wrote.

Pruitt previously announced that scientists who receive any grant money from the EPA would not be able to serve on committees intended to advise the agency on scientific questions, a move that he said would increase transparency on possible conflicts of interest.

BuzzFeed News

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Now Three Times The Size Of France And Keeps Growing

The massive accumulation of plastic and other debris in the Pacific Ocean continues to grow as global consumption of the material remains high.

Michelle Broder, BuzzFeed Reporter        March 22, 2018.

The giant floating mass of plastic and other debris in the Pacific Ocean is now three times the size of France and growing exponentially, scientists warned in a new report Thursday.

The Ocean Cleanup

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or GPGP, is not a solid mass, but instead a large area between Hawaii and California where ocean currents have brought together a massive amount of debris that grows denser toward the center of the area.

The Ocean Cleanup

Some of the plastic pieces are very large, while others are tiny fragments called microplastics.

The Ocean Cleanup

About 60% of the plastic produced in the world is less dense than seawater, so when it’s introduced to the marine environment, buoyant pieces are often transported by surface currents and winds, researchers say. Some of the debris gets broken down by sun, wind, and waves and sink. But a lot of it remains on the surface.

The mapping study took three years and employed 30 boats and two aircraft to survey the pollution, which was 16 times larger than previously thought, or three times the size of France. It is also estimated to weigh the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets.

                                 The Ocean Cleanup

The study was conducted by the Ocean Cleanup foundation, which was founded by a Dutch teenager Boyan Slat, now 23, in conjunction with researchers in the US, New Zealand, Britain, France, Germany, and Denmark, and published in Scientific Reports.

Peter Dejong / AP

Slat said the data “underlines the urgency of dealing with the plastic pollution problem. Since the results indicate that the amount of hazardous microplastics is set to increase more than tenfold if left to fragment, the time to start is now.”

The trash travels on currents across the ocean, but much of it comes from Asia and fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean, the study found.

The Ocean Cleanup

The study also found that 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of discarded fishing nets, which are known to entangle whales, seals, and other marine life.

\Peter Dejong / AP

Up to 20% of the debris in the GPGP also came from the 2011 Japanese tsunami, according to the report.

Peter Dejong / AP

Researchers said the data show “plastic pollution levels are increasing exponentially” inside the patch, “and at a faster rate than in surrounding waters.”

Ocean Cleanup is working on a system to remove the trash and fishing nets, which is set to launch this year.

Michelle Broder Van Dyke is a reporter and night editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Hawaii.

Contact Michelle Broder Van Dyke at michelle@buzzfeed.com.