Report: Former EPA aide said Scott Pruitt asked her to help his wife find a job

Scott Pruitt.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

During their interviews with congressional investigators last Thursday and Friday, two of Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt's top aides discussed how Pruitt asked them to do things like help his wife find a job and look into ways he could get out of a rental agreement without having to pay any penalties, three people familiar with the sessions told The Washington Post.

Samantha Dravis, the EPA's former associate administrator for the Office of Policy, and Pruitt's chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, were interviewed separately by staffers of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Dravis revealed that Pruitt asked her to contact the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he once led and where she once worked, while trying to find his wife a job that paid at least $200,000, but she refused to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, the Post reports. Dravis is a lawyer, and also said she was asked along with another top aide, Sarah Greenwalt, to review a rental agreement he wanted to break, people with knowledge of the interview told the Post, to see if they could find a way he could get out of the agreement without having to pay any penalties.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.