The Backup
Scott Pruitt is the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has been the “bête noire” of the Republican and Conservative movements since the Clean Air Act of 1970. The Agency has restricted using our air, water, and land as a dumping ground for industry. Since our society has seen the environment as an “entitlement” since the first settlers arrived in the 1600’s, the laws and the EPA try to regulate and protect that resource from further abuse.
Scott Pruitt was the Attorney General of the state of Oklahoma for six years. During that time, he dissolved the Environmental Protection Unit in his office, raised a ton of money from the oil and gas industry, and sued the EPA thirteen times. He entered the EPA Directorship with a clear mandate to restrain the Agency, and under a cloud of questions about emails from the oil and gas industry, including Xeroxing industry language to file official protests against EPA rules.
Since he arrived in Washington in 2017, Pruitt’s cloud has grown darker. The GAO (General Accounting Office) said he violated the law when he built a $31000 soundproof phone booth in his office and put a $5000 American flag behind his desk. He has spent millions of dollars in travel, excusing his first class seats by citing “security concerns.” He has twenty-four hour security coverage, including on trips to Disneyland and the Rose Bowl. In his first three months in office his travel costs were more the $832,000; not including trips to Italy and Morocco.
He had a “sweetheart deal” for living in Washington, staying in a Capitol Hill area apartment. The owner, the wife of a natural gas lobbyist, charged Pruitt $50 a night for use, far under the going rate for any accommodations in D.C. Since Pruitt failed to even pay that amount, she eventually changed the locks to keep him out.
Compared to former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price or Veteran’s Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, both fired for inflated travel expenses, Pruitt has far exceeded their extravagancies. So what keeps Pruitt in office, while Price and Shulkin are gone?
Pruitt has tremendous support from the conservative community. Conservative moneybags, the Koch brothers, whose fortune is based in oil and gas, spent $3.1 million to help get the Pruitt nomination through the Senate. Pruitt is “their man” in the EPA, and they want him to stay there. And, Fox News has made their support apparent. Just last week in an opinion piece, Fox praised Pruitt for de-regulating the environment without Congressional sanction:
“It would, of course, be better if the Senate passed the House bills and sent them to President Trump to sign. But until that can happen, Pruitt has taken the reins and implemented the policies on his own. Bravo.”
Pruitt is doing the bidding of his political masters, and they are willing to swallow his political indiscretions to get the job done. But there is a more important reason keeping Pruitt in his expensive seat in EPA.
Much bigger than the Pruitt problem, the Trump administration is trying to survive the Mueller investigation. Pruitt represents a possible move in that crisis, one that the President is unwilling to give up for mere corruption in office.
The scenario would be to remove Jeff Sessions from the Attorney General position. Sessions, who early in the term recused himself from all Russia related issues, doesn’t control the investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein does. If Trump fired Sessions, he could move a Senate confirmed, cabinet level appointee in temporarily until a permanent nominee is confirmed. That Acting Attorney General would not be recused, and could take control of the investigation away from Rosenstein: that control could mean restricting or even removing Muller.
Pruitt, the former Attorney General of Oklahoma and the Senate confirmed EPA Director, is the backup. He is the pawn that could move into the Attorney General “square” long enough to disrupt the Mueller team. With only four lawyers in the Cabinet, Pruitt is the primary choice, whose loyalty to “the cause” is clear. Trump is keeping his options open.
IF Trump can ignore the scandals that Pruitt creates. However, with all of the other scandals in “Trump World,” Pruitt’s “petty” financial flaws are flying pretty much under the radar. He continues to dismantle environmental protection in America, but even more importantly he stands ready to jump into Session’s chair and change the Mueller world.
He is the backup.
