Scott Pruitt is too corrupt to be corrupted

The EPA administrator didn't need a bribe to destroy the EPA

Scott Pruitt.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein)

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is in hot water over a condo. It turns out that in 2017 he stayed for several months in a room co-owned by the wife of a bigshot energy lobbyist, and at one point met with a representative of that firm in his EPA office while he was staying there. He paid only a piddling $50 per night — and only when he actually slept there, not on a monthly basis. Then it turns out his daughter also stayed in another room in the same condo while she was working as a White House intern, and effectively they had the run of the entire place, not just the rooms. It was, in essence, a huge clandestine payment in the form of drastically under-market rent.

Speculation is rising that Pruitt might be the latest casualty of President Trump's firing spree, and EPA ethics staff are investigating. But it's important to emphasize that even outside his alleged corruption, he has been the worst EPA administrator in history.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.