Lobbyist tied to condo confirms he, Pruitt met

WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt met in his office last year with a veteran Washington lobbyist tied to the bargain-priced condo where Pruitt was living.

Both Pruitt and lobbyist Steven Hart had previously denied Hart had conducted any recent business with EPA.

A spokesman for Hart confirmed Saturday that the lobbyist met with Pruitt at EPA headquarters in July 2017 to discuss efforts to preserve the Chesapeake Bay.

The admission about the meeting came after the lobbying firm Williams & Jensen filed a new disclosure report late Friday hours after Hart announced his early retirement as chairman. The firm’s filing , first reported by The Hill, says Hart lobbied EPA during the first quarter of 2018 on behalf of Smithfield Foods.

The world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield has been involved with efforts to clean up the bay since EPA fined the company $12.6 million in 1997 for illegally dumping hog waste into a tributary.

EPA’s press office did not respond to questions about Pruitt’s meeting with Hart.

Pruitt’s connections to the prominent lobbyist have been under intense scrutiny since last month, when media reports first revealed that the EPA chief had rented a luxury Capitol Hill condo from a corporation co-owned by Hart’s wife for just $50 a night. Pruitt’s daughter, then a White House summer intern, also stayed at the condo.

On Pruitt’s 2017 condo lease, a copy of which was reviewed by AP, Steven Hart’s name was originally typed in as “landlord” but was scratched out. The name of his wife, health care lobbyist Vicki Hart, was scribbled in.

Pruitt’s public calendar shows he meet at EPA headquarters on July 11 with the Smithfield Foundation, the pork-producer’s philanthropic arm. The calendar entry does not include a list of attendees.

Pruitt’s calendar does not disclose any 2018 meetings with Smithfield or its affiliates, the period covered by the report filed by Williams & Jensen.

Hart’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, confirmed on Saturday that the lobbyist had met with Pruitt at EPA in July. In a statement, Hart disputed the legal filing made by his former firm.

“I assisted a friend who served on the Chesapeake Bay Commission, and this is inaccurately being tied to Smithfield Foods,” Hart said. “I was not paid for this assistance and any suggestion that I lobbied for Smithfield Foods is inaccurate.”

In a statement issued Saturday, Smithfield said it did not direct any contacts with EPA about the Chesapeake Bay.

In another development involving the White House:

• President Trump said Saturday that he doesn’t expect Michael Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer and fixer, to “flip” as the government investigates Cohen’s business dealings.

Trump, in a series of morning tweets fired off from Florida, accused The New York Times and one of its reporters, Maggie Haberman, of “going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip’” — a term that can mean cooperating with the government in exchange for leniency.

“Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble,” even if “it means lying or making up stories,” Trump said, before adding: “Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!”

In the tweets, Trump accused the newspaper of using “non-existent ‘sources’” in a Friday story about the relationship between Trump and Cohen, who has said he would “take a bullet” for his boss. The story quoted several people on the record.