Pruitt paid lobbyist $50 per night for condo rental

WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt’s unusual housing arrangement during much of last year — when he paid a lobbyist a modest sum each night for staying in a Capitol Hill condo she co-owned — has generated a new round of scrutiny about the financial decisions of the Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Pruitt paid $50 for each night that he physically stayed in the condo, which sits a stone’s throw from the Capitol and is co-owned by health care lobbyist Vicki Hart. According to individuals familiar with the arrangement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly, Pruitt initially approached her husband, lawyer J. Steven Hart, about staying there during his confirmation process in 2017 and then extended the terms of the arrangement through last July.

Collectively, according to EPA officials, Pruitt paid $6,100 to stay in the condo for roughly six months.

Hart is chairman and chief executive of the law firm Williams & Jensen and lobbies on energy, transportation, trade, tax and entertainment industry issues. In an interview Friday, Hart said that he “had no lobbying contact with EPA in 2017 or 2018 and that his firm was correcting a federal lobbying report that identified him as working for an entity with an interest in EPA regulation.

In a separate, emailed statement, Hart described the rental as “a market-based, short-term lease for a condo owned partially by my wife … I am an Oklahoman. Pruitt is a casual friend but I have had no contact with him for many months except for a brief pass-by at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2018.”

Vicki Hart declined to comment Friday. Her husband said she “does not, and has not ever, lobbied the EPA on any matters.”

While the condo lacked some of the amenities of traditional rentals, such as a full kitchen or phone line, $50 per night is an exceedingly good deal for a prime location near the Capitol. According to the website Inside Airbnb, which compiles data from rentals on the lodging site, the average price of a private room in a D.C. home is $113 per night. In the Capitol Hill neighborhood where Pruitt was staying, the average is $142 per night.

During this period, Pruitt commuted home to Tulsa at taxpayer expense. Between March and May 2017, an analysis of federal records by the Environmental Integrity Project showed, Pruitt traveled for a total of 48 out of 92 days, mostly to Oklahoma.