Oklahoma senators stand by Pruitt
Staff Writer jwingerter@oklahoman.com
As the former Oklahoma attorney general faces a series of ethics controversies that threaten his tenure as Environmental Protection Agency administrator — and his political future — Oklahoma’s senators are standing by Scott Pruitt.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma City Republican, was asked Friday whether he believes Pruitt should resign.
“I don’t,” he told The Oklahoman. “(Administration officials) are still walking through it. EPA has their own ethics investigation and the hard part about this is all the facts getting out.”
Many of the controversies surrounding Pruitt involve Oklahoma.
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 a firm that represents Oklahoma Gas & Electric and supported his Oklahoma campaigns.
Lankford defended Pruitt’s $50-per-night condo stay and believes most people in Oklahoma would understand his decision to stay with a longtime acquaintance, J. Steven Hart.
Hart was lobbying the EPA on behalf of corporate clients at the same time Pruitt was living at the Harts’ condo, according to media reports.
“(It) would seem normal for most Oklahomans to say, ‘If I know somebody in town, I’m trying to get a place, and in the meantime to be able to stay there.’ Now, there’s all kinds of challenges about it and it becomes a big issue,” Lankford said. “In a normal world, this would seem very normal. But in a political world, everything gets dialed up, as far as the volume.”
Pruitt’s usual critics, Democrats and environmentalists, have not been the only people to dial up that volume in recent weeks. Several moderate Republicans in the House have also called on Pruitt to resign.
“It should by now be clear that Scott Pruitt’s scandals are not going to stop coming and he will continue to humiliate himself and the Trump administration every additional hour he is in office,” said Maura Cowley with the Sierra Club.
President Donald Trump, who fired many Cabinet members during his first 14 months in office, said this week he still supports Pruitt and the deregulation work he is doing.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, said Pruitt has been “instrumental” in carrying out Trump’s agenda of deregulation at the EPA, an agenda that has earned him the scorn of many.
“He’s been an effective member of the president’s team and I look forward to continuing to work with him to restore the EPA to its proper size and scope,” Inhofe said.
Pruitt is not the first Trump Cabinet member to face ethics questions about his spending habits and, if forced to resign, would not be the first to be ousted for them. Tom Price, the former health and human services secretary, was fired due to his pricey plane trips.
“I would hope, quite frankly, that he doesn’t do that with Scott Pruitt,” Lankford said, “that they allow this to be able to work its course, allow the ethics investigation to be able to go through and not jump ahead of it. But I think people, if they remove the politics of it and look and see what’s really happening — this is one Oklahoman offering another Oklahoman a place to stay until he can find a place.”