PANIC AT EPA
Security feared for boss; he was just napping
GREAT SCOTT!
Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt’s security detail broke down the door of the Capitol Hill condo he rented from the wife of an energy lobbyist last year because they believed the Trump cabinet member was unconscious, according to a report Friday.
The bizarre March 2017 incident unfolded after a member of Pruitt’s personal security became concerned about the administrator when he didn’t answer his phone, according to ABC News.
“They say he’s unconscious at this time,” a 911 operator is told, according to a recording obtained by the network. “I don’t know about the breathing portion.”
The panicked security team busted through the condo’s glass door and found Pruitt “groggy, rising from a nap,” ABC reported.
The EPA reimbursed Pruitt’s landlord, the wife of top energy lobbyist J. Steven Hart, for the damage.
Pruitt reportedly worked out a sweetheart $50-a-night deal with Hart — only paying for nights he stayed at the Washington apartment and writing checks sporadically for a total of $6,100 over the course of six months last year.
Hart is the chairman of a D.C. lobbying firm, according to reports by ABC News and Bloomberg on Friday.
Hart’s clients include ExxonMobil Corp. and the major liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy Inc.
He maintained everything was on the up and up.
Pruitt “signed a market based, short-term lease for a condo owned partially by my wife,” Hart said, according to a statement released by his firm to the Associated Press. Hart’s wife, Vicki Hart, is also a lobbyist, focusing on health care issues. The EPA did not immediately respond to calls and emails seeking comment on Pruitt’s living arrangements. Justina Fugh, the EPA ethics counsel, told Bloomberg News that the condo wasn’t an ethics issue because Pruitt paid rent. “He paid a fair price for what amounts to just a room,” Fugh said. “So I don’t even think that the fact that the house is owned by a person whose job is to be a lobbyist causes us concern.” Environmental groups have been up in arms over Pruitt’s close ties with oil and gas executives and lobbyists as he rolls back regulations. “This sweetheart deal with the spouse of someone who lobbies the EPA on behalf of industries the agency regulates should be too controversial for even the Trump administration,” said Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook.
Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, called out Pruitt, who “is supposed to protect our families from pollution,” for having “literally lived in a fossil fuel lobbyist’s house.”
Pruitt has also been criticized for taking his security detail with him on non-official business. That includes to his home in Tulsa, Okla., a family vacation at Disneyland in California and the 2018 Rose Bowl game, according to a letter Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrote to the agency’s inspector general.
In February, it was revealed that Pruitt billed taxpayers roughly $200,000 for travel expenses, which included firstclass tickets for him and his staff. Ten of those trips were to his hometown of Tulsa.
On a weeklong trip to Italy last June, Pruitt’s security detail cost upwards of $30,000.