Just because the nation is caught up with things like Trump launching a war to prove that he is not a puppet, and Trump threatening to fire the special counsel to show he’s not a puppet, and Paul Ryan running away from Washington because Trump’s a complete puppet, doesn’t mean that there’s not time for even more unraveling on the part of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt began last week by claiming that it was completely okay that he spent months living in a townhouse that belonged to fossil fuels lobbyists, because the EPA’s ethics officer said so. That was before it turned out that:
And there was the story of how Pruitt requested massive raises for two of his close friends from Oklahoma, was turned down, then plotted to simply steal the money from a fund for consultants. That story ended up with Pruitt on Fox News claiming that he wasn’t behind the raises, and didn’t know who was behind the raises. It’s a story that ended when we learned that:
And then there was the story of Pruitt’s extraordinary security precautions—security that included a private army costing at least $2 million a year, a $43,000 cone of silence in his office, an unknown amount on a second security system inside the existing security system, requests for a bulletproof car and a bulletproof desk, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for chartering planes and flying first class. It’s a story that ended with discovery that:
- A FOIA request to the EPA turned up no threats against Pruitt.
- An internal EPA report showed that the worst thing Pruitt had faced was a post card saying “climate change is real.”
- Democratic senators tried to bring this up, but Republicans protected Pruitt and suppressed the report.
Despite Donald Trump’s Pruitt-defending tweets, it’s enough to keep Pruitt on the brink of being replaced.
White House staff are considering replacing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt with his yet-to-be-confirmed deputy Andrew Wheeler, according to a source.
Seeing Pruitt off might seem like a small token of justice, but it’s unlikely to roll back an inch of the actions Pruitt’s Anti-EPA has taken to make the environment worse—especially considering just who is slated to replace him.
Among Pruitt's most egregious actions, he’s replaced the EPA’s scientists with fossil fuel lobbyists. This includes those who whose “research” shows that smog isn’t bad for you.
At least two members appointed by Scott Pruitt to the EPA Science Advisory Board received industry funding for research that's bolstering agency efforts to roll back greenhouse gas rules for cars.
The work of a third adviser selected by the EPA administrator asserts that the health benefits from reducing smog "may not occur." That study is also cited as evidence against fuel efficiency rules, but it's unclear who funded it.
Democrats continue to press for Pruitt’s removal, and despite all the other events providing cover, it’s beginning to seem that Trump may have realized Pruitt isn’t a popular choice in his search to find someone to replace Jeff Sessions as attorney general.
But the replacement for Scott Pruitt is likely to be just as awful for the environment, if not quite so openly abusive of government rules.
While Wheeler might be less combative than Pruitt, he could prove more effective. ... a consummate Washington insider who knows the agency he’s joining. He spent four years as a staffer in the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He later served as a general counsel to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and as an aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe. After that, Wheeler remained a fixture on Capitol Hill as a lobbyist, though from 2009 to 2017, his contributions went exclusively to Republicans. Until mid-2017, Wheeler lobbied for Murray Energy, the mining giant owned by coal magnate and Trump whisperer Bob Murray.
Bob Murray has been Trump’s source of prop coal miners whenever he needed to claim that “Trump digs coal.” And Wheeler has been the guy who brokered that relationship.