More heat for Pruitt: aide raises

EMBATTLED Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt enlisted a top aide to hunt for a Washington house before giving her and a colleague unapproved raises worth nearly $85,000, according to reports on Tuesday.

Pruitt — already under fire for a sweetheart deal he got on a condo, his close ties to industry leaders and lobbyists and his security and travel costs — gave the two aides hefty raises, despite the earlier rejection by the White House of his request for the pay bumps.

Both staffers worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma, where he was the state attorney general, before his cabinet appointment by President Trump.

Sarah Greenwalt, 30, was Pruitt’s general counsel in Oklahoma and serves as his senior counsel at the EPA. Millan Hupp, 26, was on his political team before she accompanied her boss to Washington to become the EPA’s scheduling director.

Pruitt — who still has Trump’s backing — asked that Greenwalt’s salary be raised from $107,435 to $164,200, and sought a bump from $86,460 to $114,590 for Hupp.

The Presidential Personnel Office dismissed the request, the Atlantic first reported. Undeterred, Pruitt (photo) went around the White House by reappointing the pair under a provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act that allows him to hire up to 30 people without outside approval.

The two received the raises, even though their official duties did not change. Hupp did take on some extra work last year, according to The Washington Post.

For more than two months, Hupp corresponded with a real estate company and went to view properties for Pruitt and his wife.

The EPA said there was nothing improper about the arrangement and argued that no government resources were used.

But Don Fox, the former acting director and general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, told The Post that federal officials are barred from enlisting one of their subordinates to do personal tasks for them, even during off hours.

“There’s a general prohibition against misusing government resources, and employees are government resources,” Fox told the newspaper.