ICYMI: White House staff tired of weathering storm Pruitt

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Lauren Lantry, lauren.lantry@sierraclub.org 

With new information breaking daily on embattled Scott Pruitt’s countless scandals, White House staff are fed up with trying to weather the Pruitt storm. According to the New York Times, White House staff are continuing to urge Donald Trump to fire Pruitt, calling Pruitt’s scandals “a bottomless pit.”

But it’s not just the White House staff that have grown tired of Pruitt’s scandals. According to Axios, Donald Trump has once again spoken to Pruitt about his scandals. A source close to Trump told Axios that the President raised the fact that a member of Pruitt’s press team has sought to sell negative stories about Interior secretary Ryan Zinke in conversation and said, "That's not good."

And now, with 24,000 EPA emails, call logs, and documents secured by the Sierra Club, news about Pruitt’s numerous ethical lapses will only continue.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the White House has confidence in the EPA’s #2, but failed to say whether the White House has any confidence at all in Scott Pruitt. Instead, the only reference to Pruitt was "I don’t have any personnel announcements at this time."

With his scandal count continuing to rise, Sarah Huckabee Sanders should answer the following questions:

  • With White House staff urging Scott Pruitt’s firing and more bad press to come, does the President still support Pruitt?

  • You’ve said on multiple occasions that the White House is conducting its own investigation into Pruitt -- separate from the 11 other investigations into his scandals. Who is running this investigation, and where does it currently stand?

  • Is the President at all concerned with all the negative press Pruitt is generating for his administration?

Here’s the latest on Pruitt’s scandals:




 

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