April 26, 2018

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

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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:

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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