Scandal Ridden Scott Pruitt Lies on Fox News

In a humiliating clip released of an interview with Ed Henry of Fox News, Scott Pruitt is pressed hard to explain why he directly defied Donald Trump by coordinating massive raises for his staff through an obscure loophole -- after the Trump White House rejected those raise. Pruitt attempts to pass the buck, blaming someone else, but he doesn’t actually know who. According to reporting by the Atlantic and government documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by E&E News, Pruitt lied.

According to The Atlantic:

"Pruitt ordered it done. Though Hupp and Greenwalt’s duties did not change, the agency began processing them for raises of $28,130 and $56,765, respectively, compared with their 2017 salaries. Less than two weeks after Pruitt had approached the White House, according to time-stamped Human Resources documents shared with The Atlantic, the paperwork was finished."

According to E&E News:

“Documents obtained by E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act detail ‘administratively determined’ hires under the Safe Drinking Water Act, showing that at one point last year, at least 20 officials were brought on under the hiring provision.”

According to the Washington Post:

“The 1977 provision to the Safe Drinking Water Act authorizes the EPA to hire up to 30 people without the approval of the Senate or the White House. The power, granted directly to the EPA administrator, was originally designed to let the agency quickly hire senior management and scientific personnel during times of critical need...Pruitt’s use of the little-known provision to the main federal law protecting public drinking water is in the spotlight after he also used it to grant significant raises to two EPA young staffers despite the lack of a White House approval.”

Below is a statement from Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune:

“Pruitt could not even save himself from humiliation on Donald Trump’s favorite news outlet by lying. Pruitt knows he’s in hot water with Trump for directly defying him and is saying and doing anything to save his job. Pruitt has said he’s dumbfounded by the outrage around his scandals. We continue to be dumbfounded as to how he still has is job.”

###

Background:

This is one in long list of Scott Pruitt’s scandals. Below is just a partial list:

• $43,000 soundproof booth

• $120,000 first-class trip to Italy

• Spent $90,000 on first-class flights and other travel in a single week.

• Trying to get a $100,000 a month private jet

• First class flights to Oklahoma

• Wasting taxpayer dollars on personal trips to rose bowl and Disneyland

• Sweetheart deal on a fossil fuel lobbyist’s condo

• Approving a pipeline pushed by his lobbyist landlord

• Promoted liquefied natural gas in Morocco as backed by his lobbyist landlord

• Making taxpayers pay for the door his security staff broke down to wake him from an afternoon nap

• Undermining Scientific Advisory Boards

• Failing to enforce Bedrock Clean air and water laws

• Rolled back laws protecting our air and water from mercury and arsenic

• Approving Chlorpyrifos use in spite of science that says it makes kids sick

• Lied to Congress about his use of a private email account

• Met with oil executives then backed away from a regulation on oil companies.

• Gave a Superfund job to a failed banker whose bank had given loans to Pruitt

• Met with a mining CEO, then immediately started clearing the way for his proposed mine

• Hired a Republican Opposition research firm with taxpayer dollars to investigate his own staff

• Met with trucking executives, then preserved a loophole to benefit their company while dirtying our air.

• Gave an EPA public affairs official the OK to do outside media consulting.

• Awarded a bug-sweeping contract to a business associate of Pruitt’s head of security.

• Almost half of EPA political appointees have strong industry ties.

• Pruitt appointed the vice president of a polluting company to the EPA’s environmental justice advisory council.