The hits kept coming Thursday for embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt after the agency’s top ethics lawyer said he was misled about Pruitt’s sweetheart condo deal, a new report said.
EPA lawyer Kevin Minoli had issued an opinion last week that said Pruitt paid fair-market value under a deal in which he rented a room at a business lobbyist’s condo for $50 a night — a fraction of what an average hotel room or similar condo would cost.
But Minoli said in a letter written Wednesday and obtained by CNN that his ruling was based on the language in the lease that said the EPA boss would occupy just one room in the condo.
But it was later revealed that Pruitt’s college-age daughter occupied a second bedroom last summer when she was a White House intern.
Pruitt paid about $1,000 a month, less than a third of what Minoli’s review found nearby two-bedroom homes listed for.
“Some have raised questions whether the actual use of the space was consistent with the terms of the lease,” Minoli wrote Wednesday.
“Evaluating those questions would have required factual information that was not before us and the review does not address those questions.”
Pruitt had gone on the offensive Wednesday, trying to shore up his position in a series of interviews with Fox News and conservative media outlets, during which he continued to suggest he had lived alone.
In a marked change in tone, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that a review of Pruitt’s actions is under way and that President Trump was not OK with some of the details that have emerged, including news this week of enormous raises awarded to two of Pruitt’s closest aides, political appointees from his home state of Oklahoma.
Pruitt claimed Wednesday that he didn’t approve the raises — and didn’t even know who in the agency he runs did. He said he was unaware of the decision and planned to review it.
Meanwhile, an EPA employee told the AP that another of Pruitt’s closest aides has resigned.
Samantha Dravis served as Pruitt’s senior counsel and associate administrator for policy.
The source, who had direct knowledge of Dravis’ resignation, was not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity.
Dravis, 34, previously worked for a fundraising group founded by Pruitt before being hired at EPA, where she often accompanied the administrator on his frequent trips across the country and overseas.
The source said Dravis had not been attending meetings inside the agency in recent weeks and was recently informed she would not be accompanying Pruitt on a planned trip to Portugal.
“It has been an honor to serve in this role at EPA, and I am enormously grateful for the opportunity,” she confirmed to NBC News. “I wish Administrator Pruitt and all of the public servants at EPA the very best.”
Her resignation last week was first reported by the Washington Post on Thursday.
The EPA’s press office did not respond Thursday to requests for comment about Dravis’ resignation or Minoli’s letter.
Questions about whether Pruitt will remain in his job have swirled for more than a week, since news first broke about his rental of the condo co-owned by the wife of Steven Hart, chairman and CEO of the powerhouse lobbying firm Williams & Jensen.
Federal disclosure reports show Hart’s firm lobbied the EPA extensively in the last year — including Pruitt himself.
The AP reported last week that while living in the Harts’ condo, he met in his EPA office with a lobbyist from Hart’s firm and two executives from an energy company seeking to scuttle tighter pollution standards for coal-fired power plants.
The EPA also granted a favorable ruling to a pipeline company represented by Hart’s firm.
Beyond the question of whether Pruitt paid a fair-market value for the rental, Hart’s business interests potentially raise other ethics issues that Minoli wrote he did not consider as part of his earlier review of whether the favorable lease constituted an improper gift to Pruitt from the lobbyist.
Ethics rules covering federal officials say they must remain impartial when making regulatory decisions and can’t show favoritism.
“I think it was very poor judgment for Pruitt to rent a place owned by a lobbyist who describes him as only a casual friend,” said Walter Shaub, who ran the federal Office of Government Ethics before quitting last year after clashing with Trump.
“My biggest concern centers on the question of whether he may have met with anyone from the lobbyist’s firm while staying there, which would implicate the impartiality regulation.”
As head of the EPA, Pruitt has been Trump’s point man for the administration’s push to make the agency more industry-friendly and roll back environmental regulations seen by the White House as overreaching, many of which were put in place by the Obama administration.
Before being tapped as EPA chief, Pruitt served as Oklahoma’s attorney general.
As the state’s top cop, he was a climate-change skeptic who fought the EPA’s regulations on carbon emissions.
In Washington, Pruitt has moved to scrap, gut or replace numerous environmental regulations opposed by industry while boosting the continued burning of fossil fuels, which scientists have concluded is the primary cause of climate change.
He has come under fire for his use of taxpayer-funded travel, mostly in first class, despite federal regulations requiring federal officials to fly coach. Pruitt has defended his travel arrangements, saying he needed to sit in first-class seats due to security concerns.
In one instance last year, Pruitt and members of his staff spent roughly $40,000 in taxpayer funds to fly to Morocco to help encourage the country to import liquefied natural gas from the United States.
In the Fox interview, Pruitt claimed the travel controversy is a conspiracy manufactured by his critics on the left, and he also defended himself over the raises to his two close aides, saying the pay hikes were approved by staff, he was unaware of the decision and planned to review it.
With AP
