Scott Pruitt Takes All the Credit and None of the Blame for His Scandal-Filled Time at the EPA

Here’s who he threw under the bus today.

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt made a strong assertion of  his ultimate responsibility for what goes on at the EPA when he made his opening statement to the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, in a hearing that was dominated by questions about his ethics.

“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “The responsibility for identifying and making changes rests with me and no one else.”

But Pruitt spent much of the remainder of the three-hour hearing shifting the blame to EPA career employees, his environmental critics, and the media. He distanced himself from all of the controversies on his watch. “I am not aware,” became his favorite refrain. 

Asked about the $43,000 soundproof phone booth he had built in his office (the cost of which ballooned from the original estimate), Pruitt said that career staff had made all the decisions without his knowledge.

 

The Atlantic reported that Pruitt had personally signed off on raises for two of EPA staffers he knew from his Oklahoma days, after the White House rejected the raises. The raises were approved under Safe Drinking Water Act. But when Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y) asked about it, Pruitt replied, “I’m not aware if she was hired under that Drinking Water Act authority.”

Under Pruitt’s watch, the EPA’s enforcement penalties against polluters has dropped by 49 percent compared to his predecessors. Pruitt said he was not involved in one fine against a seed company that was reduced from $4.9 million to $150,000. Pruitt had hired Jeff Sands, a former Sygenta pesticides lobbyist as a senior adviser at the EPA.

Then there were the reports that Pruitt had retaliated against multiple staffers who questioned his spending requests:

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate