Trump lauds EPA chief despite cloud over ethics
— White House officials sounded increasingly doubtful Thursday about the future of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, even as President Donald Trump appeared to throw him a public lifeline.
Speaking Thursday to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump used a series of superlatives to describe Pruitt.
“I think he’s done a fantastic job,” the president said. “I think he’s done an incredible job. He’s been very courageous. It hasn’t been easy, but I think he’s done a fantastic job.”
That was contrasted by more tepid remarks earlier from White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley.
“They say we all serve at the pleasure of the president,” Gidley told reporters. “The president himself said he had confidence [in Pruitt], and so that’s where we stand today.”
Pruitt has been under fire for days after numerous ethics questions, including his rental of a bargain-priced Capitol Hill condo with ties to a fossil-fuels lobbyist. If Trump were to fire him, he would be the fourth agency head ousted in the Trump administration’s first 15 months.
Trump has often praised Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who has worked to scrap, delay or rewrite President Barack Obama-era environmental regulations opposed by the oil, gas and coal industries.
But Trump also has publicly expressed support for other administration officials who were fired or resigned, right up until sending tweets announcing their departure.
A review of Pruitt’s ethical conduct by White House officials is underway, adding to other probes already being conducted by congressional oversight committees and the EPA’s inspector general into outsized spending on luxury air travel and unusual security precautions.
Late Wednesday, an EPA ethics official said he wasn’t provided the full facts when he ruled last week that Pruitt’s $50-a-night rental was not an ethics violation.
Kevin Minoli, EPA’s designated agency ethics official and principal deputy general counsel, had written in a memo March 30 that Pruitt’s lease of a room in a Capitol Hill condo co-owned by health care lobbyist Vicki Hart — for $50 a night, charged only when he stayed there — did not constitute a gift because that rate for 30 consecutive days would have equated to a monthly rent of $1,500. Minoli described that as “a reasonable market value.”
But in a new memo, first reported by CNN and obtained independently by The Associated Press and The Washington Post, Minoli emphasized that he only evaluated the terms of the lease and not activities the document did not cover.
The lease, for example, provided for the use of a single room. “All other space is controlled by the landlord,” it stated.
But several EPA officials have confirmed that Pruitt’s adult daughter stayed in the condo apartment’s second bedroom for a period when she was working at the White House last year.
“Some have raised questions whether the actual use of the space was consistent with the terms of the lease,” Minoli wrote. “Evaluating those questions would have required factual information that was not before us and the Review does not address those questions.”
He also clarified that he did not examine whether Pruitt’s arrangement violated the impartiality rule, which would have prohibited the administrator from having any dealings with other employees at Hart’s lobbying firm.
The arrangement has come under intense scrutiny because Hart’s husband, J. Steven Hart, is chairman of the firm Williams & Jensen, which lobbies on energy issues along with other matters.
Steven Hart told the Post last week that he “had no lobbying contact with the EPA in 2017 or 2018” and referred to Pruitt as a “casual friend” with whom he has had little contact. In recent interviews, however, Pruitt has described Hart as someone he has known for years.
Federal disclosure reports show Hart’s firm lobbied the EPA, including Pruitt himself, extensively over the past year.
The Associated Press reported last week that while living in the Hart condo he met in his EPA office with a lobbyist from Steven Hart’s firm and two executives from an energy company seeking to scuttle tighter pollution standards for coal-fired power plants.
Ethics rules covering federal officials say they must remain impartial when making regulatory decisions and can’t show favoritism. Pruitt also signed an ethics pledge when joining the Trump administration in which he promised not to accept gifts from lobbyists.
A copy of the lease posted by CNN on Wednesday showed that Hart’s name had been scribbled out and his wife’s name handwritten in.
FLURRY OF INTERVIEWS
Pruitt had gone on the offensive Wednesday, trying to shore up his position in a series of interviews with Fox News and conservative media outlets during which he continued to suggest he had lived alone.
He also has repeatedly highlighted the fact that agency ethics officials approved his Capitol Hill rental.
He told the Washington Examiner that Steven Hart was a fellow Oklahoman who has no clients with business at the EPA. “I’ve had ethics counsel here at the agency, the office of general counsel and ethics officials, review the lease. They’ve actually looked at the lease. Most of the people who are criticizing me haven’t. If you look at the lease, it’s very clear it’s market value,” he said.
And he told the Washington Times: “Career ethics officials at the EPA … have reviewed the lease and have determined there are no ethical concerns, that it’s market value. I was living out of a suitcase, and I literally had access to one room in a unit where common area access by others occurred all the time. In fact, I could pull up comps. The ethics people actually did this.”
Later, during an interview with Fox News, reporter Ed Henry asked, “Didn’t President Donald Trump say he was gonna drain the swamp? Is draining the swamp renting an apartment from the wife of a Washington lobbyist?”
“I don’t even think that that’s even remotely fair to ask that question,” Pruitt replied.
He went on to reiterate that EPA ethics officials had approved the lease in recent days and again insisted that he had paid a market rate. “There were comps done by ethics officials here,” Pruitt said, suggesting that on Craigslist it is possible to find similar rentals in the same neighborhood for under $1,000.
In an email Wednesday night, EPA spokesman Liz Bowman said that Minoli’s most recent memo “reassures [last] Friday’s memo from EPA career ethics officials, who determined that the condo lease was lawful, based on market information for similar rentals on Capitol Hill.”
“There is no connection between decisions Administrator Pruitt has made at EPA and any place he has lived. Any attempt to draw that link is patently false,” she added.
Despite Pruitt’s insistence that EPA career officials gave the green light to his 2017 living arrangement, which went from late February to early August, agency ethics officials weren’t aware of it until news reports late last week.
Political aides then scrambled, contacting the ethics
lawyers and pushing them to make a hasty ruling despite not knowing some details of the arrangement, according to people familiar with the agency’s response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly.
These individuals said that both Minoli and Justina Fugh, the EPA’s senior counsel for ethics and an agency veteran, signed off on the arrangement before news reports surfaced about Pruitt’s daughter also being in the apartment for a time.
Vicki Hart said in a statement last week that she was not aware of the young woman’s presence there and that Pruitt would owe her additional rent if the reports were true.
Under the ethics cloud, one of Pruitt’s closest aides has resigned. Samantha Dravis served as his senior counsel and associate administrator for policy. Bowman said Thursday that Dravis, 34, was leaving to pursue other opportunities.
Dravis previously worked for a fundraising group founded by Pruitt before being hired at the EPA. She often accompanied the administrator on his frequent trips across the country and overseas.
Dravis joined the EPA after serving with Pruitt as general counsel of the Republican Attorneys General Association. At the EPA, she helped revive a program for seeking regulatory advice from miners, oil companies and manufacturers.
Although the move coincides with the swirl of ethical questions surrounding Pruitt, Dravis’ departure is unrelated, said two people who know her and asked not to be identified. She had
been seeking a new position for several months, one of the people said.
EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who previously served Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe in a similar role, also has considered quitting out of frustration in recent months, said three people familiar with his thinking.
In an emailed statement, the EPA said that account “is not accurate.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Trump is not OK with some of the details that have emerged about Pruitt, including news this week of big raises awarded to two of Pruitt’s close aides. In a combative Fox News interview, Pruitt said he didn’t approve the raises and doesn’t know who did.
His performance was panned by White House insiders.
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York on Thursday became the third House Republican to say Pruitt should go, joining a growing chorus of Democrats and environmentalists. She was speaking to about 200 constituents in her home district.
But, ultimately, it’s up to the president to determine whether Pruitt goes or stays.
“I’ll make that determination,” Trump said when asked whether he was bothered by the ethics issues surrounding Pruitt. “But he’s a good man, he’s done a terrific job. But I’ll take a look at it.”