President supports EPA’s Pruitt
WASHINGTON: President Trump is giving Mr Scott Pruitt a thumbs up as the embattled EPA Administrator fights to keep his job amid a growing chorus for his ouster over ethical lapses.
“I think he’s done a fantastic job. I think he’s done an incredible job. He’s been very courageous,” the president told reporters on Thursday afternoon on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from an event in West Virginia. “It hasn’t been easy, but I think he’s done a fantastic job”.
Speculation that Mr Pruitt’s job was in jeopardy has been rampant in recent days amid growing scrutiny of several ethical mishaps, including the discounted accommodations he received in Washington last year from a lobbyist friend.
Mr Pruitt paid $50 a night to rent a room on Capitol Hill in an apartment owned by health care lobbyist Ms Vicki Hart, who is married to energy lobbyist J. Steven Hart. He used the room from February 2017, when he became EPA administrator, until he moved out in July. He only paid for the nights he stayed during this period.
EPA’s senior ethics official, Kevin Minoli, recently reviewed the lease — months after he had vacated the apartment — and deemed that the arrangement did not violate agency rules. Nonetheless, the White House launched its own investigation into the matter as it was not convinced with Mr Minoli’s findings.
Asked on Thursday whether he was bothered by the reports on Mr Pruitt, Trump did not seem overly concerned.
“I have to look at them,” he said. “I’ll make that determination. But he’s a good man, he’s done a terrific job. But I’ll take a look at it”.
If Mr Pruitt survives and keeps his job, it will be largely because he’s ferociously spearheaded the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda which business groups and energy interests have been clamoring.
In the last 14 months, he’s been the nation’s top environmental rule maker. The former Oklahoma attorney general who sued the EPA more than a dozen times has rolled back the Clean Power Plan, delayed the Waters of the US rule, and helped convince the president to back out of the Paris Accord on climate change, among a number of other changes.
Mr Trump’s vow to bring back coal, important in mining states like West Virginia have been buoyed by Mr Pruitt’s actions.
“You know, I just left coal and energy country,” the president told reporters on Air Force One. “They feel very strongly about Scott Pruitt. They love him”.
Still, the EPA administrator might not be out of the woods despite the president’s praise with other investigations still underway.
Mounting scrutiny over his first-class flights, top aides getting huge pay raises after the White House rejected them, and the cozy rental arrangement he had with a lobbyist have sparked increasing calls for his dismissal among some Republicans, including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, as well as environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers.
Mr Pruitt went on Fox News that day to defend his conduct, unapologetically calling his arrangement similar to an “Airbnb situation” where lodgers only pay for the nights they stay, and countering the criticism that renting from an energy lobbyist is a potential conflict of interest. He blamed the “toxicity” of Washington for contributing to the firestorm and said the criticism is “about the mission we’re engaged in here”.
Mr Pruitt and his allies including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, claimed he was the target of a leftwing conspiracy to get rid of him because of his aggressive efforts to undo Obama-era policies.
But even the interview was apparently mishandled because Mr Pruitt went on the air despite a report from the Washington Post which claims the White House asked him not to.