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EPA’s Scott Pruitt Is Getting Blasted by Negative Press Coverage

By MICHAEL BASTASCH

What started as a scandal over first class travel, the media’s focus on Scott Pruitt has morphed into an investigation of his personal living arrangements in D.C. that could end poorly for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator.

Pruitt came under fire earlier this year for spending more than $100,000 on first class airline travel, which the EPA said were due to security concerns. The administrator also took fire for a costly $120,000 trip to Italy for the G7 summit, but that was only the beginning of the media scrutiny.

The White House is already investigating Pruitt’s living arrangements after a slew of media reports indicated the former Oklahoma Attorney General rented a room from a D.C. power couple for $50 a night. There are already reports White House chief of staff John Kelly wanted to relieve Pruitt of duty.

That was before the Atlantic revealed on Tuesday that Pruitt used a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to give two staffers raises that were reportedly rejected by White House officials. While seemingly not illegal, Pruitt’s circumvention raised the ire of EPA staffers and White House officials.

Pruitt’s two-bedroom unit in the Capitol Hill condo is partially owned by the wife of J. Steven Hart of the firm Williams & Jensen. Pruitt only paid for nights he used the room, paying a total of $6,100 for the roughly six months he lived there, Bloomberg reported.

EPA’s chief ethics counsel Justina Fugh told Bloomberg “the arrangement wasn’t an ethics issue because Pruitt paid rent,” and EPA released a memo from the agency’s lead ethics officer on the lease.

“As EPA career ethics officials stated in a memo, Administrator Pruitt’s housing arrangement for both himself and family was not a gift and the lease was consistent with federal ethics regulations,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement.

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