April 12, 2018
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The pressure on Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is building as inauspicious details keep emerging about his activities in office and his life outside it.
The allegations of luxury travel, a sweetheart housing deal with a lobbyist, and Pruitt’s use of a loophole to get raises for two close aides aren’t trivial. They could be serious violations of ethics, if not the law.
And government watchdog investigators are now systematically building a paper trail of Pruitt’s time at the EPA. The New York Times reported this week that David Apol of the Office of Government Ethics, the top ethics official at the federal government, took the unusual step of writing a letter to the EPA’s head of ethics Kevin Minoli.
The letter asks Minoli to investigate potential ethics violations in Pruitt’s $50 a night condo deal with an energy lobbyist, his lavish travel, security, and personnel expenses, and his retaliation against staffers who objected.
The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is “to protect human health and the environment.” Disgraced EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt tried his best to undermine this vital mission by choosing to slash critical health protections and let corporate polluters off the hook. Now that Pruitt’s been booted, we need an EPA administrator dedicated to undoing his toxic agenda and restoring the agency to its core mission. Progress is possible and necessary – but another corporate crony or climate skeptic will not get us there.
Scott Pruitt is gone, but the fight is just beginning. We need an EPA administrator who puts our health and environment first, period. Any alternative is unacceptable.
