This post has been updated.
And Pruitt’s decision to ignore White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly’s warnings to be more cautious about giving public interviews only complicated his standing with many of Trump’s key aides.
Those officials’ sense of unease continued to escalate over the course of a single day, after the EPA’s lead ethics official issued a memo saying that he lacked important facts when he concluded that Pruitt’s rental lease with a lobbyist last year did not violate federal gift rules. It also emerged that Pruitt was late with some of his rent payments for a room in that Capitol Hill condo.
A White House spokesman offered Pruitt little reassurance. “We all serve at the pleasure of the president,” Hogan Gidley told reporters Thursday. “You guys know that. And when he’s not pleased, you’ll know it.”
Trump has resisted calls to oust Pruitt but has complained privately about the EPA chief for days, advisers said.
Publicly, however, the president went out of his way to praise Pruitt. Making a rare appearance in the press cabin of Air Force One on a return flight from West Virginia on Thursday, Trump remarked, “He’s been very courageous . . . I can tell you at EPA he’s done a fantastic job.”
Pruitt traveled to the state where he grew up to meet with Kentucky air-quality regulators, business leaders and elected officials, saying in a statement that the EPA “continues its work to enhance both environmental protections and economic growth.”
At EPA headquarters, top aides strategized about how to protect Pruitt’s job even as they put the final touches on an executive order that would change the way the federal government ensures that states are meeting national air pollution standards.
In a sign of Pruitt’s split-screen existence, according to administration officials briefed on the matter, Trump on Friday plans to sign the directive expediting air- quality permits. Yet the White House canceled an announcement event where the two were to appear together.
Several congressional Republicans, as well as some governors, conservative groups and pundits, rallied to Pruitt’s side. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas both publicly backed him Thursday, as did governors Matt Bevin (Ky.), Phil Bryant (Miss.) and Pete Ricketts (Neb.). Bevin tweeted that the administrator should “ignore the nattering nabobs of negativism,” invoking a phrase that Vice President Spiro T. Agnew used in 1969 while blasting the media.
.@EPAScottPruitt is likely the bravest and most conservative member of Trump's cabinet. We need him to help @realDonaldTrump drain the regulatory swamp.
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 5, 2018
This is compelling. Why do Obama and his media cronies want so badly to drive @EPAScottPruitt out of office? @realDonaldTrump is too cagey to be duped and bullied by the Obama groupies. https://t.co/USHqDUDECH
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 5, 2018
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh delivered an on-air defense of Pruitt, and groups such as FreedomWorks and the Federalist Society expressed their support.
Still, the sharp focus on Pruitt’s housing arrangement, his premium-class travel both domestically and abroad and those aides’ raises has only further roiled an inner circle already under stress.
Samantha Dravis, a longtime adviser who serves as senior counsel and associate administrator in the EPA’s Office of Policy, submitted her resignation last week to work in the private sector. Her decision to leave is unrelated to Pruitt’s recent ethics woes, according to several agency officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. But it comes at a time when Pruitt is relying on an increasingly narrow set of advisers to navigate decision-making.
The Washington Post confirmed that three EPA officials — Kevin Chmielewski, former deputy chief of staff for operations; John E. Reeder, former deputy chief of staff; and Special Agent Eric Weese — left or were reassigned after raising concerns about how Pruitt and his deputies operated. Chmielewski is on leave without pay, Reeder is on an “executive in residence” fellowship at American University, and Weese is no longer the head of Pruitt’s security detail.
Weese could not be reached for comment; Chmielewski and Reeder have declined to comment. Reeder is the husband of a Washington Post reporter, Carol Leonnig.
The staff moves were first reported by the New York Times, which also named two other individuals sidelined or forced to take leave after questioning how money was being spent at the EPA. In an emailed statement Thursday, agency spokesman Jahan Wilcox called them “a group of disgruntled employees who have either been dismissed or reassigned.”
Pruitt spoke at length during a Fox News interview about his role in Greenwalt and Hupp getting raises of 52 percent and 33 percent respectively under an unusual maneuver involving their reappointment through a provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
In the interview Wednesday, Pruitt implied he was not involved in those decisions.
“I found out this yesterday and I corrected the action, and we are in the process of finding out how it took place and correcting that going forward,” he told correspondent Ed Henry.
Wilcox stressed in a statement Friday that Pruitt “does not know the details of staff salary nor does he make those kinds of personnel actions. … He was not aware the raises had transpired nor the means by which they transpired.”
But two EPA officials and a White House official told The Post that the administrator instructed staff to award substantial pay boosts to both women, who had worked in different roles for him in Oklahoma.
Questions surrounding Pruitt’s public account of his management decisions have been sharpened by recent revelations about his unusual rental arrangement last year.
The lease provided for the use of a single room, stating that “all other space is controlled by the landlord.” But several EPA officials have confirmed that Pruitt’s adult daughter stayed in a second bedroom for a period when she was working at the White House.
Kevin Minoli, the EPA’s principal deputy general counsel, had written in a March 30 memo that Pruitt’s lease with condo co-owner Vicki Hart — for $50 a night, charged only when he stayed there — did not constitute a gift because that rate for 30 consecutive days would have equated to a monthly rent of $1,500. Minoli described that as “a reasonable market value.”
Yet in a new memo, which was obtained by the Campaign Legal Center and first reported by CNN, Minoli emphasized that he evaluated the terms of the lease only and not activities the document did not cover.
“Some have raised questions whether the actual use of the space was consistent with the terms of the lease,” Minoli wrote. “Evaluating those questions would have required factual information that was not before us and the Review does not address those questions.”
He also clarified that he did not examine whether Pruitt’s arrangement violated the impartiality rule, which would have prohibited the administrator from having any dealings with other employees at Vicki Hart’s lobbying firm.
Separately, Minoli’s colleague, Justina Fugh, a senior ethics attorney and agency veteran, said she learned of Pruitt’s unusual housing arrangement late last week when political aides called her while she was at the movies, told her the outlines of the lease and asked her for a quick ruling. She initially gave her approval based on the specifics they shared. Only later did she learn other details from news reports.
“What they gave me was not the full picture . . . I was just too credulous,” Fugh said Thursday. “Advice that’s given by an ethics official is only as good as the information that’s provided.”
The rental deal has come under intense scrutiny because Hart’s husband, J. Steven Hart, is chairman of the firm Williams & Jensen, which lobbies on energy issues along with other matters. He told The Post last week that he “had no lobbying contact with EPA in 2017 or 2018” and referred to Pruitt as a “casual friend” with whom he has had little contact. In recent interviews, however, Pruitt has described Hart as someone he has known for years.
A copy of the lease, attached to Minoli’s most recent memo, showed that Steven Hart’s name had been scribbled out as the legal representative and his wife’s name handwritten in. According to a senior administration official, Vicki Hart made the change.
Despite the favorable $50-a-night rate he was receiving on the Capitol Hill condo, Pruitt still fell behind on his rent, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Vicki Hart, who served as Pruitt’s landlord and is wife of energy and transportation lobbyist Steve Hart, was at times forced to remind him that rent payments were due, these people said.
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