Pruitt quits as EPA administrator
Trump praises Oklahoman, says he did not ask him to exit
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned Thursday after a cascade of controversies over his spending, ethical lapses and management decisions.
Talking to reporters on Air Force One, President Donald Trump praised his scandal-plagued EPA chief, saying there was “no final straw” and he had not asked for Pruitt’s resignation.
“Scott is a terrific guy,” Trump said. “He came to me and said I have such great confidence in the administration I don’t want to be a distraction. … He’ll go and do great things and have a wonderful life, I hope.”
In his resignation letter to Trump, obtained by The Associated Press, Pruitt expressed no regrets.
“It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring,” Pruitt wrote. “However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.”
Pruitt, a Republican, had appeared Wednesday at a White House picnic for Independence Day, wearing a red-checked shirt and loafers with gold trim. Trump gave him and other officials a brief shout-out, offering no sign of any immediate change in his job.
EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, will take the helm as acting
administrator starting Monday.
Pruitt weathered an array ethics scandals in recent months, including questions about taxpayer-funded firstclass travel, a discounted condominium rental from a Washington lobbyist and the installation of a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office.
But revelations about his behavior continued to mount, including reports that he repeatedly enlisted subordinates to help him search for housing, book personal travel and even help search for a six-figure job for his wife. That quest included setting up a call with Chick-fil-A executives, in which he discussed her becoming a franchisee, as well as outreach to a conservative judicial group that eventually hired Marlyn Pruitt.
In recent weeks, an exodus of trusted staff members left Pruitt increasingly isolated, and some once-loyal Republican lawmakers wearied of defending him. Investigators on Capitol Hill had summoned current and former EPA aides for interviews, as part of the more than dozen federal inquiries into Pruitt’s spending and management of the agency.
On Thursday, Trump called Wheeler to inform him that he would be taking the helm of the agency, according to an individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Soon after, Trump announced in a two-part tweet that he had accepted Pruitt’s resignation.
“I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency,” Trump tweeted. “Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!”
INVESTIGATIONS MULTIPLY
The departure marked a precipitous fall for Pruitt, who during his roughly 16 months in office took steps to reverse more than a dozen major regulations enacted under former President Barack Obama and overhauled key elements of the agency’s approach to scientific research.
Like Trump, Pruitt voiced skepticism about mainstream climate science and was a fierce critic of the Paris climate agreement. The president cheered his EPA chief’s moves to boost fossil-fuel production and roll back regulations opposed by corporate interests.
In recent months, however, Pruitt’s favor and credibility within the administration began to unravel. Even as he continued to announce far-reaching actions to scrap or scale back regulations, scrutiny over his ethical decisions and profligate spending began to overshadow his actual policies.
In February, The Washington Post detailed how Pruitt had routinely flown first-class and stayed in high-end hotels on dozens of trips during his first year, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded expenses. While the EPA said such travel arrangements were necessary given the elevated number of threats to Pruitt’s security, the revelations led to a wave of criticism about his spending and inquiries from lawmakers and government investigators.
Further allegations of ethical misconduct soon followed.
First came news about a discount rental agreement Pruitt arranged in 2017 with the wife of an energy and transportation lobbyist. It allowed him to pay $50 a night only on the nights he used her Capitol Hill condo apartment.
He also demanded 24-hour-a-day protection from armed officers, resulting in a 20-member security detail that blew through overtime budgets and racked up expenses of more than $3 million.
Then came news that the EPA leader’s office had circumvented the White House and used an obscure provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act to give large pay increases to two top aides, staff members who had come with him from Oklahoma. In an interview in early April with Fox News, Pruitt claimed to have “corrected” the decision and said he was not aware of the raises beforehand. Three administration officials subsequently confirmed that Pruitt had indeed endorsed the raises, though other staff members had overseen the paperwork.
The drumbeat of accusations quickened: That the EPA once considered a roughly $100,000-a-month contract to lease Pruitt a private jet. That Pruitt’s director of scheduling was also house-hunting for him on the side. That after leaving his Capitol Hill rental last summer, he ran the EPA from Oklahoma for a month. That he wanted his security detail to use emergency lights and sirens to get him around Washington faster, including to dinner at a favorite French restaurant. That he had upgraded to a larger, customized — and more expensive — sport utility vehicle than his predecessor. That he had reassigned or dismissed a handful of senior employees who
questioned his spending on travel, furnishings and more.
The slew of damaging revelations, many of which came to light through media reports and public records lawsuits filed by environmental groups, triggered investigations related to Pruitt’s conduct by EPA’s Office of Inspector General, the House Oversight Committee and other federal watchdogs.
It was not immediately clear how Pruitt’s resignation might affect those ongoing probes. No longer a federal employee, Pruitt can’t be compelled to speak or otherwise cooperate with the inspector general’s investigation. As a private citizen, he could still be subpoenaed to testify before Congress, but Republican-led committees have thus far shown little appetite in forcing him to do so.
Jennifer Kaplan, a spokesman for EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins, said Thursday that the office was “assessing and evaluating” its ongoing audits and investigations in the wake of Pruitt’s departure.
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and until Thursday a strong defender of Pruitt, said Trump made the right decision to accept the resignation.
“It has become increasingly challenging for the EPA to carry out its mission with the administrator under investigation,” said Barrasso, who is from Wyoming.
Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, long a vocal critic of Pruitt’s, applauded his departure.
“Mr. Pruitt’s brazen abuse of his position for his own personal gain has been absolutely astounding, rivaled only by the silence of far too many in Congress and in the White House who allowed Mr. Pruitt’s unethical, and, at times, possibly illegal behavior to go unchecked,” said Carper.