About 17 minutes into a hard-hitting Fox News interview with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt recently, a revealing detail emerged about the director's penchant for diversion and deflection. When asked by interviewer Ed Henry about reports of improper financial dealings among Pruitt's senior staffers, the director tried to divert the discussion to a list of his supposed successes in cleaning up federal Superfund sites.
"Ask the people of St. Louis," Pruitt interjected.
The people of St. Louis are puzzled. We have seen nothing in the way of EPA successes under Pruitt's watch, largely because Pruitt assigned one of his longtime cronies to handle it.
While Pruitt has spent lavishly on office furnishings, excessively elaborate security and first-class air travel, he has given minimal attention to the World War II-era nuclear waste that continues to pose enormous problems at the West Lake Landfill. Pruitt's solution was to dig up some of the radioactive waste but leave the rest in place in an unlined pit, where it will continue to threaten downstream areas for millennia. Pruitt apparently thinks the people of St. Louis love that idea.
President Donald Trump boasted that he would drain the Washington swamp, but Pruitt has worked like a beaver to ensure his corner stays intact. He devoted his congressional testimony Thursday to blaming others for the swamp he's created. The White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill are expressing increasing nervousness about the embarrassment Pruitt poses.
A New York Times report last Sunday outlined numerous damning examples of how he profited from his time in office as a state senator and later as attorney general of Oklahoma. He profited from sweetheart real estate deals, colluded with businesses he was charged with regulating and developed the big-spending habits that would follow him to Washington.
The newspaper reported that Pruitt, working on a $38,400 salary as a state senator with a modest legal practice, managed to purchase a house worth an estimated $475,000. He received a $100,000 discount by arranging the purchase through a shell company formed with his business partner, Kenneth Wagner.
The difference between the sale price and the house's value was paid by SBC Oklahoma, which later became part of AT&T. The company had major business at the time before the Oklahoma legislature. Pruitt made no disclosure of the arrangement, as required by Oklahoma ethics laws.
Wagner is now a senior adviser at the EPA. The banker who arranged their mortgage is Albert Kelly, who has been barred from working in the finance industry. Kelly is the deputy Pruitt cited as doing an "outstanding job" in St. Louis.
The part of Pruitt's record that is not an environmental disaster is marked by a grandiose array of privilege and perks. He is the very embodiment of the Washington swamp. Which is why it's time for Pruitt to go.
