Scott Pruitt: After the high life, a job hunt

Pruitt is promoting coal exports and doing other work for his longtime friend, coal baron Joseph W. Craft III, while offering himself as an energy consultant and a paid speaker, said several friends and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly.

In an interview, Pruitt’s lawyer Cleta Mitchell confirmed that he was pursuing those activities, noting that his predecessor, Gina McCarthy, also works as a paid speaker. But she said Pruitt will not violate a five-year ban on lobbying the EPA.

“He has discussed multiple opportunities with me and has been quite careful not to do anything that is even close to the line — and to ensure he is in full compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law,” she said.

Mitchell said it makes sense for Pruitt — who had not held a job in the private sector since he was elected as Oklahoma’s attorney general eight years ago — to seek work in an area he knows plenty about. “He was named EPA administrator because of his vast expertise and knowledge in the field — the field of energy and the environment and the regulatory process,” she said.

As Pruitt makes his way in the private sector, the man once talked about as a potential attorney general remains under scrutiny by federal investigators — particularly for his high travel costs.

A Washington Post analysis found that Pruitt’s travel costs in his first year as EPA chief amounted to more than $837,000, a figure that climbed as Pruitt switched from economy flights to first-class.

Pruitt exceeded the government rate for hotels and other daily expenses by more than 150 percent on 17 of his trips, records show, largely because he routinely chose to stay in boutique hotels. EPA officials filed paperwork justifying these overages, which occurred on 43 percent of the trips he took during his first year.

While there are only a few physical remnants of Pruitt’s time at the EPA — namely a largely unused, $43,000 soundproof phone booth and a spot on a wall for a portrait that remains unfinished — his term has left a lasting mark on the agency and the environment. During his short tenure, Pruitt worked aggressively to shrink the EPA’s size and ambition, sow doubt about the scientific consensus that human activity is driving climate change and appoint deputies determined to carry on his deregulatory agenda.

Pruitt belongs to a growing club of prominent figures who have seen their reputations take a public beating while serving in Trump’s Cabinet. Two others — Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin — left because of travel-related missteps. This month, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced his resignation under pressure from the White House as he faced multiple federal probes into his conduct.

[Zinke was a rising star in Washington. Then he joined Trump’s Cabinet.]

Unlike those three Cabinet members, Pruitt enjoyed a close rapport with Trump. But White House officials became frustrated as congressional and federal investigators probed an array of allegations, including charges that Pruitt used his position — three times — to try to obtain work for his wife. Investigators also scrutinized the administrator’s deal with a lobbyist to rent a condo for $50 a night.

Top aides convinced the president to let him go.

On his last day at headquarters, July 6, Pruitt struck a gracious note despite his hasty resignation a day earlier. One EPA employee spotted him heading out into the summer evening, with a stack of handwritten notes for people he hadn’t gotten a chance to tell goodbye.

These days, he no longer has the round-the-clock security detail, the large staff entourage or the black SUVs that used to ferry him around the city to speeches, meetings with industry executives and meals at pricey restaurants.

But Pruitt has continued to shuttle between Washington and Tulsa, meeting with officials from the same industries he oversaw while at the EPA.

Rather than seeking work that might violate Trump’s lobbying restrictions, Pruitt has pitched himself as a sort of messenger who could advance the goals of America’s industrial sector.

In October, for example, Pruitt met with officials from the National Association of Manufacturers, according to two individuals familiar with the meeting. NAM spokesman Michael Short would neither confirm nor deny the meeting but said the association had not retained Pruitt in any capacity.

Pruitt’s first out-of-town trip after being sworn in was to address the association’s spring board meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. And the trade group backed several of the regulatory rollbacks he set in motion, including the repeal of Obama-era limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and a rule relaxing new reporting procedures for facilities that produce and store hazardous chemicals.

In November, Pruitt met in Washington with staff from the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry’s largest trade group — and an organization he had met with less than a month after being sworn in, EPA records show. EEI declined to comment.

Mitchell said the meetings were unrelated to Pruitt’s career.

Craft, a major Trump donor, began talking to Pruitt a few months ago about possible opportunities for the former administrator. He eventually retained Pruitt, according to two associates, to consult on overseas sales — an important market as the number of U.S. coal-fired power plants continues to shrink.

“Joe Craft has been a personal friend for many years, predating Scott’s tenure as EPA Administrator,” Mitchell said. “To suggest or infer anything to the contrary is false.”

While coal is no longer king in the United States, overseas the top 16 markets increased their U.S. coal imports by 13.2 percent during the third quarter of 2018 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“It’s an increased demand for now, and the prices are high, so it’s a good market — for now,” said Tom Sanzillo, finance director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. He added that Craft’s company had outperformed its competitors this year, boosting its coal output by 6 percent while national production had dipped by 5 percent.

Alliance Resource Partners did not respond to multiple requests for comment but told The Post in September that any work Pruitt did for Craft, its CEO, would be in a “personal” capacity rather than as a firm employee.

In a third-quarter call with investors, Craft sounded upbeat about his company’s prospects. Saying that utilities have been “drawing down their stock” over the past couple of years, he predicted that they would order more coal in the year ahead.

As Pruitt returned to the private sector, his financial pressures were exacerbated by his legal burdens, according to public disclosures.

Pruitt complained of money woes while in office, telling friends and aides that even on his $189,600 salary, he was financially stretched, maintaining the mortgage on his $1.2 million home in Tulsa along with a new condo rental on Capitol Hill. While at the EPA, he enlisted the help of his staff in trying to find work for his wife — including having them contact the chief executive of Chick-fil-A about a franchising “opportunity.”

[Billionaire gave Pruitt $50,000 to defray legal debts in 2018]

Scott Pruitt, third from left, then the head of the EPA, listens as President Trump speaks during a roundtable with auto executives in May. Pruitt resigned from the Agency in July. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By the time Pruitt left the EPA in early July, according to federal financial disclosure forms, he shouldered between $100,000 and $250,000 in bills from one Oklahoma-based law firm, and between $15,000 and $50,000 from another. He also had credit card debt of between $15,000 and $50,000.

Pruitt acquired those debts even after selling at least $50,000 in assets last year, according to reports he filed with the EPA in September.

His ethics issues aside, Pruitt fulfilled the mission the president appointed him to execute.

Over the past two years, the EPA staff shrank 6 percent, according to a Post analysis of federal data. As a result, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency is down 245 scientists, 116 engineers and 237 environmental protection specialists.

Pruitt once assured Trump that he had cut the agency’s size to Reagan-era levels and was returning its focus to its “core mission,” as opposed to climate change. Scaling back what he called the previous administration’s regulatory excesses, Pruitt worked to reverse several Obama-era policies aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, loosening carbon limits on power plants and suspending tighter emissions standards for certain diesel-powered trucks.

His policies have prompted at least four dozen legal challenges from opponents including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and Democratic attorneys general led by California’s Xavier Becerra. And his one-time deputy Andrew Wheeler — a former coal and energy lobbyist tapped by the president to succeed him — is now working to advance many of these initiatives.

His defenders argue that Pruitt was unfairly attacked during his tenure by people who oppose the Trump administration’s environmental policies.

“Pruitt was doing what he was supposed to do,” said energy executive Doug Deason, a major GOP donor and Trump ally. “No one else was. He was getting attacked hard. We knew he was going to get attacked hard.”

Mitchell also described the ethics allegations against Pruitt as unfounded.

“Ethics rules are designed to protect the public. They’re not supposed to be weaponized in order to destroy political opponents,” she said. “And that’s what happened to Scott Pruitt, because he was public enemy number one for the left.”

Then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt holds up a hard hat he was given during an April 2017 visit to Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company's Harvey Mine in Sycamore, Pa. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)

Pruitt has not fully shed the specter of the ethics investigations he faced in office.

On Dec. 19, the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), wrote to the EPA to demand that it “fully comply” with previous requests for documents related to Pruitt’s conduct in office — primarily his first-class travels.

“I intend to continue this investigation in the next Congress,” Cummings wrote.

The EPA’s inspector general is still investigating multiple aspects of Pruitt’s tenure — including his taxpayer-funded, first-class travel — the results of which are expected in the new year. Although some lawmakers questioned Pruitt’s first-class travel and round-the-clock security detail, the EPA maintained that it was necessary because of the “unprecedented” number of threats he faced.

Of the $837,000 travel price tag, nearly $189,000 was just for Pruitt’s flights, the Post found. Almost $515,000 of the costs stemmed from his security detail, with roughly $132,000 more covering the expenses of staff who accompanied him. Pruitt was traveling for 128 days his first year, a figure that does not include his vacations.

Given the ongoing scrutiny, Pruitt’s cadre of support inside the administration has faded.

The president once viewed him as a loyal soldier and confidant, brainstorming on policy in the Oval Office and commiserating about Democratic opponents by phone. But Trump also has joked about some of Pruitt’s missteps, according to senior administration officials. On more than one occasion, they said, the president congratulated Wheeler for not attempting to buy a used mattress from Trump International Hotel, a move Pruitt once tried.

Several months ago, according to two senior administration officials, Pruitt’s former chief of staff at the EPA took up a collection among the agency’s political appointees to buy Pruitt’s chair from White House Cabinet meetings — a traditional parting gift for any administration’s highest-serving officers. The effort raised only a fraction of the chair’s more than $1,200 purchase price.

But Pruitt never had any intention of having his former aides pay for the chair, Mitchell said. This fall, he got in touch with the White House and bought the leather-bound seat himself.

At Radici on Capitol Hill, he still has something of a constituency — even if most of the staff disagrees with his politics.

“More than anything, we love being a local, community place where everyone feels comfortable visiting,” said Radici’s owner Bridget Sasso, whose patrons have included Michelle Obama as well as Zinke, the outgoing Interior secretary.

Pruitt stopped by not long ago to explain that he was moving out of his nearby apartment and to wish the staff well.

Fraker, his barista, was sorry to see “Edward” go.

“I miss seeing him,” she said.