Donald Trump’s embattled EPA administrator can’t seem to help himself from using his position to make his family wealthier and lift their social status in the process. Surrounded by the wealthiest presidential cabinet in history, Pruitt has had to sit around the White House mess hall listening to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin brag about jetting off to the islands for the weekend and listen as the insufferable Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross showed off his custom-made gold-stitched slippers with the Commerce Department logo. Poor ol’ Scott Pruitt’s net worth is only around $400,00. That’s more than the average American, but it’s a paltry sum for Donald Trump’s orbit.
He’s trying to get wealthy and he’s using the power of his office to do it. Whether it is the extremely low rental rate he paid a D.C. lobbyist for an upscale town home, to treating all his friends to free lunch at the White House, to having his EPA aides reach out to the Chick-fil-A CEO about getting a franchise, Pruitt isn’t shy about using his influence and his office to better his personal situation.
Turns out, he’s been having aides set off-the-books meetings with billionaires who might be willing to give him a leg up in life. From the New York Times:
The aides said E.P.A. staff members helped arrange meetings and phone calls for Mr. Pruitt with influential donors to his past campaigns and political causes in Oklahoma, where he served as a state lawmaker and attorney general before joining the Trump administration. The appointments — including with Philip Anschutz, a Denver-based billionaire — were kept off Mr. Pruitt’s public schedule, the aides said, because it was clear the sessions were not about E.P.A. business, even though agency staff was involved in setting them up.
He used his influence to benefit himself and his family personally and professionally, including getting tickets to the Rose Bowl to see his home state team, the Oklahoma Sooners. And when his daughter wanted to attend the University of Virginia Law School? The EPA chief called in some favors to get her in.
As an example, Mr. Pruitt, shortly after taking the E.P.A. job, reached out to the former speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates seeking help for his daughter, McKenna, in securing admission to the University of Virginia School of Law. William Howell, the former speaker, appears on Mr. Pruitt’s official E.P.A. calendar, and he confirmed in an interview that he was approached by Mr. Pruitt and subsequently wrote a letter to the school’s dean on the daughter’s behalf.
And if you are wondering why this man still has a job in public service, it’s because he’s still has the support of his Big Pollution, Big Oil and Big Gas friends. In fact, he delivered a big win for his Swamp friends today by announcing they intend to gut water protections for 117 million Americans. From Mother Jones:
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday inched closer to proposing a regulation to replace an Obama-era rule that clarified which bodies of water qualified for federal protection.
The proposal comes more than a year after EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signed an executive action to revoke the 2015 Clean Water Rule, also known as the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule. The regulation clarified which wetlands and streams could be protected under the Clean Water Act and expanded federal authority to all “navigable” waters. That extended the federal safeguards to 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, securing the drinking water of more than 117 million Americans.
But a federal judge stayed the Clean Water Rule in 2015; the rule has since bounced around the courts. In January, the Supreme Court volleyed the case back to the district court level. In the meantime, Pruitt began the process of repealing the rule outright.
It can’t be said enough times: the corrupt swamp fish rots from the head.