As documented this week by Rachel Maddow it appears that Scott Pruitt was actually vetted and chosen for his position as EPA chief by billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn and that besides systematically destroying environmental protections he’s also been going out of his way to shovel cargo ship bushel’s of money directly into Icahn’s pockets.
Before hiring Pruitt he met with Trump at Trump Tower where he was told to “go two blocks down the street to talk to Carl” which he did and once he received Icahn’s endorsement he was hired.
Once you understand Icahn’s links to Pruitt many of his subsequent actions begin to make much more sense.
Carl Icahn resigned from his post as special advisor on regulation to Donald Trump ahead of a critical magazine article detailing his potential conflicts of interest and questioning whether he had acted illegally.
CNBC originally published an investigation on the matter in December.
The new New Yorker piece centered on how the billionaire investor, who announced his departure from the role on Friday, had been pushing to change part of a rule that has a negative impact on one of his energy investments.
Icahn said that he resigned from the role to avoid "partisan bickering" about his position. The billionaire investor said he did not want that scrutiny to affect the Trump administration's work on regulatory reform.
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Still, former White House ethics lawyers had told CNBC that Icahn's appointment to the informal role, given his stake in refiner CVR Energy, represented a conflict of interest and could have put him at risk of violating conflicts laws.
The rule in question requires refiners to blend ethanol, a renewable fuel, into gasoline. In an interview on CNBC's "Fast Money: Halftime Report,"Icahn said the Environmental Protection Agency should immediately revoke part of the rule that requires refiners that cannot blend ethanol into gasoline to buy credits instead.
If Icahn's advice in his capacity as special advisor on regulation contributed to such a repeal, he would have inherently aided in removing a disadvantage for CVR Energy. Repeal of the regulation could have potentially boosted CVR's stock price and enrich Icahn.
The markets were anticipating Icahn would help shape rules that would benefit CVR: Shares of the company rose 11.5 percent after Trump named him to the role. Icahn Associates held 82 percent of CVR Energy's outstanding shares at the time, according to FactSet data.
There’s also the story of the odd trip the Pruitt took to Morocco along with 7 members of his staff and also his full security details — who apparently missed a connecting flight in Paris and had to stay there for the weekend — and eventually met to pitch the idea of having Morocco import liquified natural gas from the U.S., a task which has absolutely nothing to do with his job as head of the E.P.A.
On the five-day trip that the EPA has said cost taxpayers around $40,000, Pruitt only worked one full day and had one-hour meetings the days before and after.
The main purpose of Pruitt’s trip was to tout American liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, a purpose that Democrats say is not within the EPA’s mission.
And in the time leading up to the Morocco trip, Pruitt met with numerous representatives of associations and companies with interests in LNG exports, including a Kinder Morgan meeting two days before the trip. That company is developing two LNG export terminals.
“If these were the individuals who advised you about your trip before you departed, it would suggest the purpose had little to do with EPA's mission and more to do with interests from your time in Oklahoma,” wrote Whitehouse, a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
But then again it does have something to do with the fact the only company with the capability to export natural gas happening to be Chenier Energy, which is a company owned by Carl Icahn.
The chief executive of Cheniere Energy is standing down just days after Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, increased his stake in the company, which will soon be the first to begin large-scale exports of liquefied natural gas from the US.Charif Souki has been replaced on an interim basis by Neal Shear, a Cheniere board member who was once co-head of Morgan Stanley’s commodities business, the Houston-based company said on Sunday.
And also happens to employ the lobbying firm of Steve Hart, the landlord for Pruitt’s sweetheart condo deal as I’ve previously noted.
Torshin happens to be one of the 17 Russian Government officials who the Trump administration finally sanctioned this week. And not only does he have links to the NRA, he also has links to John Bolton who in turn has links to Cambridge Analytica through his SuperPAC.
And there’s more — lots more.
- Daily Beast reports that Pruitt’s condo SugarDaddy Steven Hart and his lobbying firm have several clients with business before the EPA, including MillerCoors, Rocky Mountain Bottling Co, Cheniere Energy, Black and Decker, Stanley Oil and Gas, Smithfield foods, Coca Cola, American Airlines, Chrysler, General Motors and Ford.
- AP reports that Pruitt’s condo lease agreement had originally had Steven Hart’s name as the landlord on it, but his name was scratched out by hand and his wife Vicky’s name was written in — while Steven is an energy lobbyist who might have conflicts being the landlord for the EPA administrator Vicky is a healthcare lobbyist who wouldn’t have that problem.
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The Atlantic reports that Scott Pruitt overrode WH objections to give two of his long time cronies raises of up to $60k for Sarah Greenwalt and Millian Hupp. And if that isn’t bad enough EPA is also weakening Obama era Fuel standards and looking at blocking California from setting it’s own higher standard.
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Thinkprogress reports that Scott Pruitt signed off on a pipeline deal for a client of his condo landlords lobbying firm.
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Reports surface that Pruitt’s landlord had considered him an endless house guest like Kato Kaelin because the lease was only for a few weeks and Pruitt had stayed for months, Eventually they had to change the locks to get him out. Former Ethics Czar Walter Schaub points out that $50-a-night for one room was found to be a fair Air BNB style rate — but Pruitt’s daughter was also staying in the second bedroom for free which would amount to a potentially illegal gift.
So in addition to lobbying Morocco to buy LNG which would be profitable for Icahn and his landlord Steven Hart — who eventually had to lock him out of his room to get him to leave it — Pruitt also setup several other sweatheart deals for Chenier, Hart and Icahn.
And then there’s the curious story of Samantha Dravis.
Politico and others report Pruitt aide Samantha Dravis, the senior counsel and associate administrator of the EPA’s office of policy, submitted her resignation last week.
It turns out that Dravis hadn’t been coming into work at the EPA for 3 solid months, but was till getting paid.
Samantha Dravis — the top policy adviser to Scott Pruitt, the chief of the Environmental Protection Agency — is said to be resigning. Senator Thomas Carper, Democrat of Delaware, raised questions about her work history in this letter to the E.P.A.’s inspector general.
I write to request that the Of?ce of Inspector General conduct an immediate review of EnvironmentalProtection Agency?s (EPA) efforts to prevent ??aud related to employee time and attendance, including an investigation of potential fraud committed by Administrator Pruitt?s political staff. Speci?cally, I have been informed that Ms. Samantha Dravis, Associate Administrator of Office of Policy, did not attend work or perform her duties for much if not all of the months of November 2017-January 2018. I am additionally informed that Ms. Dravis was likely compensated as a full-time employee throughout that time.This is not the ?rst time that reports of time and attendance problems have plagued the agency.
In 2013,EPA learned that John Beale, a senior career of?cial, had defrauded the agency for years by claiming that his months-long absences from work were attributable to his undercover work for the CIA. He was sentenced to 32 months in prison] and the case was the subject of considerable Congressional2interest} This matter also led to several reports, written by and by yous, recommending improvements in oversight of- employee time and attendance practices.
Yet somehow, even though she wasn’t showing up for work but was still getting paid she managed to go along on the Morocco trip.
Pruitt’s scandals of personal ethics where he’s shoveling federal money into his own pocket and taking advantages of perks, from trying to buy a bullet proof desk to the cone of silence in this office and over $3 Million for his person security detail.
The Environmental Protection Agency reportedly incurred $3 million in taxpayer-funded expenses for administrator Scott Pruitt's security detail and travel arrangements, according to news reports published on Friday.
Pruitt's security detail reportedly comprised of 20 full-time members — three times the size of former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy's part-time security staff.
Eric Weese, the former head of Pruitt's protective detail, voiced concern over Pruitt's expenses, which included taxpayer-funded first-class flights for short trips from Washington, DC, to New York City, according to The New York Times. Weese was eventually replaced with Pasquale Perrotta, a former Secret Service agent who operates a private security company
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- Pruitt's security detail accrued enough overtime to reach their annual maximum salary of around $160,000.
- During his first three months as EPA chief, Pruitt's security detail cost over $832,000.
- Weekly schedules revealed that over 36 people were assigned to Pruitt's security detail in a span of six weeks.
- Pruitt was provided security during family trips and sporting events. Former EPA administrator McCarthy had roughly a half-dozen people on her security staff, and was not provided protection during off-hours.
- During a trip to Italy, Perrotta hired private Italian security guards that arranged a motorcade for Pruitt. Members of the Italian security detail were reportedly personal friends of Perrotta and accompanied Pruitt to a posh restaurant for hours.
- The agency spent around $9,000 in 2017 for increased security measures, such as biometric locks for his doors, and for hiring a private contractor to sweep Pruitt's office for hidden listening devices.
- $43,000 was spent to install a soundproof phone booth at Pruitt's office.
- A request for a $100,000-per-month private jet membership, a bulletproof vehicle, and $70,000 for furniture that included a bulletproof desk for an armed security guard was made. The requests were denied.
These efforts are not different from his official actions as head of the EPA where he is shoveling money into the pockets of his corporate buddies and pals like Icahn and others.
This is all about fleecing the American people and the Treasury and literally lighting that money on fire like the Health Ledger’s Joker in the The Dark Knight.
And that’s exactly why Trump won’t fire Pruitt.
He's doing exactly what Trump wants, burning it all down. They don’t care what happens to the environment in the process, they don’t care what happens to people as they try to drink water that’s been contaminated by coal ash and heavy metals they don’t care about us “little people”. They living high on the hog and they’re going to take every advantage, every sliver of fun and joy, and leave the rest of us all with the dregs.
WASHINGTON ― The Environmental Protection Agency announced plans Thursday to scrap Obama-era rules tightening restrictions on disposal of coal ash, the toxic byproduct from coal-fired power plants that has caused major water contamination problems across the country.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt billed the new proposal as a bid to give states more independence over coal ash disposal, though he moved to reconsider the 2015 regulation in September at the request of fossil fuel utilities.
The EPA’s announcement makes no mention of the risks coal ash poses to human health and the environment. Rather, the agency justified its move by noting it is expected to save the utility sector between $31 and $100 million annually.
“Today’s coal ash proposal embodies EPA’s commitment to our state partners by providing them with the ability to incorporate flexibilities into their coal ash permit programs based on the needs of their states,” Pruitt said in a statement.
Coal-fired power plants in the United States produce roughly 140 million tons of coal ash per year, containing toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, selenium and other carcinogenic substances. The waste product is typically stored in wet ponds, nearly 46 percent of which operated without liners to prevent hazardous chemicals from seeping into groundwater, according to 2012 data released by the EPA.
Living within a mile of a wet coal ash storage pond poses a greater health threat than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, raising the risk of cancer to one in 50, an EPA study from 2010 found. Children are particularly at risk of learning disabilities, birth defects, asthma and cancer, with 1.54 million living near such storage sites, according to EPA data cited by the Sierra Club.
That’s what a corporate raider does, enriches himself no matter what it costs others. Gordon Gecko is their hero.
That’s who they are.