Pruitt says he didn’t lie to Congress
TULSA — Scott Pruitt on Friday said he did not lie to Congress about his email use.
“That’s simply not the case,” Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, told The Oklahoman.
Pruitt, a Tulsa Republican, has faced criticism over his answers during the confirmation process.
The flap arose because he told a U.S. Senate committee he used only his official email address and government-issued phone while Oklahoma’s attorney general to conduct official business.
Senate Democrats called on him in a March 17 letter to correct the record. They wrote documents released in response to Open Records Act requests “reveal several instances in which your personal email address was used for official business.”
The senators wrote the released documents “show that you were not fully forthcoming and truthful with the committee.”
In a letter to senators Friday, Pruitt expanded on his original one-sentence written answer “to prevent any possible confusion.”
“My practice is to conduct official business through official channels, including my state-provided email accounts,” Pruitt wrote. “I make my best efforts to ensure that communications related to state business are copied or otherwise provided to official state systems.”
Pruitt acknowledged in the letter he determined after an exhaustive review of his personal email account “a small portion of those emails may relate to state business.”
Pruitt indicated in the letter the emails at issue were a mixture of political matters and state business. “Under Oklahoma law, political matters must be transacted using personal email accounts. That includes emails concerning political matters that may arguably also touch on state business,” he wrote.
He told the senators he turned over all of his personal emails to the state attorney general’s office for an independent determination whether any should be disclosed pursuant to Oklahoma Open Records Act requests.
About the criticism of his original response, Pruitt told The Oklahoman, “It’s part of the toxicity in Washington, D.C., that that reflects. We provided information based upon what we had available.”
He stressed that he originally had only three to four days to respond to more than 1,100 written questions. He said he hopes his updated response will bring clarity and closure to the process “so we can move on.”
“And, hopefully, some of this political theater will stop,” he said.