Pruitt defends job at meeting with Trump
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt met with President Donald Trump on Friday to lay out his case for why he should remain in his post amid a stream of questions about his ethical standing, according to two administration officials.
Pruitt visited the White House to discuss his agency’s recent steps to roll back car fuel efficiency standards implemented under former President Barack Obama, but he also fought for his job in his meeting with the president, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions.
While White House aides are increasingly fed up with Pruitt, and chief of staff John Kelly has advocated firing him, Trump remains less certain, the officials said. Pruitt is one of the most effective members of his Cabinet in undermining his predecessor’s regulatory agenda, and Trump enjoys his hardcharging style.
Kelly and other White House aides are frustrated by the steady drip of negative press Pruitt is attracting over a seemingly below-market lease on an apartment owned by the wife of a leading lobbyist; reports that he instructed his security detail to use emergency lights and sirens to beat traffic; and the continuing fallout from his use of private and first-class air travel last year. Pruitt has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and blamed the accusations on political opponents of the policies he is enacting.
Pruitt has sat for a series of interviews, largely with conservative news outlets, to defend himself — though even supporters acknowledge he did himself no favors with a Fox News interview this week in which he seemed unable to fend off some of the allegations.
“We’re continuing to review any of the concerns we have,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
“The president feels that the administrator has done a good job at EPA,” she added.
On Capitol Hill, where some Republican lawmakers have already called for Pruitt’s firing or resignation, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Pruitt must go.
Pruitt’s tenure, she said, has been “part of the Trump administration’s culture of corruption, cronyism and incompetence.”
The energy lobbyist whose wife leased a bedroom to Pruitt last year had a roster of clients with business before the EPA, according to a Bloomberg News review of lobbying disclosures.
J. Steven Hart, the chairman of Williams & Jensen, has said he didn’t personally lobby the EPA in 2017 or this year. But plenty of his corporate clients had pending matters with the agency, the lead federal regulator governing air and water pollution nationwide, Bloomberg has found.
Questions about Pruitt’s lease stem from a bedroom he rented in a Capitol Hill condo from health care lobbyist Vicki Hart under terms that allowed him to pay $50 a day — but only for the days it was occupied. Pruitt’s adult daughter also stayed there while working as a White House intern. Canceled checks reviewed by Bloomberg show he paid $6,100 to use the room over roughly six months last year.
But the name printed on the lease is that of Vicki Hart’s husband, J. Steven Hart. His name was scratched out and hers written in its place on a copy of the lease included in an EPA memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
“Vicki Hart is the sole owner of this unit,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said, when asked about the lease change.