Coal billionaire Craft and EPA’s Pruitt share cozy ties

LEXINGTON, Ky. — It was one of the biggest games of the University of Kentucky basketball season, and Scott Pruitt had scored two of the best seats in the arena: a few feet from the action, in a section reserved for season-ticket holders who had donated at least $1 million to the university.

The special access for Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also included watching from the players’ entrance as the team streamed onto the court, and posing for a photo with a star player in the locker room area.

But there was more to the game in December than a superfan experience for Pruitt and his son, who joined him. They sat in seats belonging to Joseph W. Craft III, a billionaire coal executive who has engaged in an aggressive campaign to reverse the Obama administration’s environmental crackdown on the coal industry. Craft and his wife donated more than $2 million to support President Donald Trump’s candidacy and inauguration.

Pruitt’s attendance at the game, the details of which have not been previously reported, followed a year of regulatory victories for Craft, who maintains close ties to Pruitt, even as he has lobbied the EPA on issues important to his company, Alliance Resource Partners. And unlike other executives with whom Pruitt is known to have close ties — such as oilman Harold Hamm or coal mogul Robert E. Murray — Craft has stayed relatively under the radar.

A major contributor to Pruitt’s campaigns in Oklahoma when Pruitt served in state government, Craft saw Pruitt at least seven times during his first 14 months at the EPA, agency records and emails show, and they were scheduled to appear together on at least two other occasions. That is more than Pruitt has met with representatives of any environmental group.

The relationship is so close that the two men trade text messages, with Craft proposing in one July 2017 exchange a possible “long-awaited” dinner and another visit with his company’s executives.

It has been an auspicious turnaround for Alliance and for Craft, who in nearly four decades in the coal industry had felt unwelcome at the EPA, apparently never even setting foot in the agency’s headquarters, one executive told an energy conference last November.

Pruitt’s mostly behindthe-scenes relationship with Craft is emblematic of his unorthodox approach to leading the EPA, where he often blurs the lines between personal and official relationships and has created the impression at times that he does the bidding of the industries the agency regulates. As administrator, he has become the subject of a dozen ethical and other investigations, including several focused on his ties to lobbyists and others with business before his agency.

In October, Pruitt traveled to Craft’s childhood hometown, Hazard, Kentucky, where, with Craft in the audience, he announced the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A month earlier, Pruitt postponed enforcement of a rule barring coal-powered plants from dumping toxic metals into rivers, a move requested by a coal industry group with Craft on its board.