‘WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK,’ TRUMP TELLS PRUITT
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt received a statement of support from President Donald Trump on Monday as the former Oklahoma attorney general faces ethical questions related to his travel, living arrangements and office spending.
In a phone call, Trump urged Pruitt to “keep his head up” and “keep fighting,” the Associated Press reports, citing two unnamed administration officials. The president told Pruitt, “We’ve got your back.”
“I hope he’s going to be great,” Trump told White House reporters Tuesday, without elaborating.
Some have questioned the extent to which Pruitt has support of Trump — a fellow Washington outsider who has also done battle with the press and political appointees of former President Barack Obama— as some Republicans call for his firing.
Many of the ethical concerns raised in recent weeks involve Oklahomans. Two EPA employees who reportedly received significant salary increases over the objections of the White House worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma. Some of his first-class travel involves flying home to Tulsa. The woman Pruitt rented a Washington, D.C., condo from is married to a lobbyist for Oklahoma Gas & Electric, who supported his Oklahoma campaigns.
“By no means has OG&E received any favorable treatment from the EPA,” said Brian Alford, a spokesman for the energy company, in a statement Tuesday.
OG&E, through its lobbyist, has opposed an Obama-era plan to cut carbon emissions. Alford said OG&E has met with EPA officials, including Pruitt, “in the normal course of business” but stressed those meetings were ordinary for a federally regulated company.
“The administrator on two occasions joined other EPA experts in meetings we attended,” Alford said.
Controversies
The slow trickle of negative news that nagged at Pruitt for the first year of his tenure has turned into a downpour during the past week following an ABC News report that Pruitt rented, for $50 a night, a Capitol Hill condo owned by the wife of J. Steven Hart, an energy lobbyist. In addition to OG&E, Hart lobbied on behalf of Enbridge, a Canadian company that received EPA approval for a pipeline expansion while Pruitt was living at the condo, the New York Times reported Monday.
The Harts donated $1,750 to Pruitt’s campaign for attorney general, according to Oklahoma Ethics Commission documents. Steven Hart also paid $1,616 for an October 2014 fundraising reception that benefited Pruitt’s campaign, documents show.
The White House is conducting a review of Pruitt’s lease for the Hart condo, the Wall Street Journal reports, to determine whether he paid rent at market value. If he paid rent below market value, the condo could raise federal ethics concerns.
Pruitt has faced questions for many months about his travel, specifically the use of charter jets and first-class seats. The Oklahoman reported in September that Pruitt spent $14,434 for a single day of flights around Oklahoma aboard an Interior Department plane on July 27, 2017. The Washington Post reported Monday that Pruitt considered leasing a private jet at a cost of $100,000 a month in taxpayer funds but decided against doing so because of the cost.
In the latest controversy, The Atlantic reported Tuesday that Pruitt attempted to give large salary increases to two staffers, Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, but the Trump administration rejected the request. Pruitt then reappointed the two employees under a provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act traditionally used to hire scientific specialists, and approved the raises himself.
Greenwalt was Pruitt’s general counsel when he was the attorney general of Oklahoma. Hupp, an Oklahoma State University graduate, was a paid consultant for Pruitt’s political action committee and super PAC before he went to Washington.
A request for comment from the staffers was forwarded to EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox, who said in a statement that Pruitt has asked the White House to review whether the raises were appropriate.
Survival
Pruitt, a former state senator who twice won a statewide election for attorney general, has been on a path of political ascendancy for nearly a decade. That path could be blocked, or at least become much rockier, if he is forced out of the Trump administration.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, said on Twitter on Tuesday that Pruitt’s “corruption scandals are an embarrassment to the administration and his conduct is grossly disrespectful to American taxpayers. It’s time for him to resign or for (Trump) to dismiss him.” Another Florida Republican, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said “distractions and scandals have overtaken (Pruitt)’s ability to operate effectively. Another person should fill that role.”
Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, speculated Sunday that Pruitt is unlikely to survive the condo controversy, telling ABC, “I don’t know how you survive this one.” Conservative political strategist Jeffrey Lord, a confidant of Trump, told Newsmax on Monday: “I’m not so sure that he can survive this, that’s what my political sense of this is.”
Still, Pruitt has supporters in Congress. Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Tulsa Republican and political backer of Pruitt, said in a statement Tuesday that Pruitt “has been an effective member of the president’s team” and “instrumental in carrying out President Trump’s deregulatory agenda at the EPA.”
At a town hall meeting in Pauls Valley last week, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Moore, applauded Pruitt for “undoing a lot of regulations that we think are economically harmful and unnecessary.”
The White House has experienced a high turnover rate in Trump’s first 14 months and one Cabinet member, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, was forced to resign due to costly travel, a complaint also being leveled against Pruitt.
Pruitt did not address the various controversies Tuesday at a news conference to announce the rollback of Obama-era auto fuel efficiency standards. He did, however, praise Trump.
“The president is again saying, ‘America is going to be put first,’” Pruitt said.
He later added, “We have nothing to be apologetic about.”