An internal email suggests that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt knew and approved of a controversial pay raise for a favored aide last month, even though he has said he knows nothing about the raise.
Top staffers became aware of an email exchange between the EPA’s human resources division and one of the two aides that received the highly talked about pay increase last month, the Atlantic reported.
In the exchange, senior counsel to the administrator Sarah Greenwalt wrote to HR to confirm that her pay raise of $56,765 was being processed.
“[Greenwalt] definitively stated that Pruitt approves and was supportive of her getting a raise,” said an EPA official who saw the email chain. The email “essentially says, ‘The administrator said that I should get this raise,’” another administration official confirmed.
An EPA spokesman did not immediately respond to the Atlantic’s request for comment.
Other officials interviewed for the article said it seems clear the EPA is working quickly to square that email with Pruitt’s public story that he knew nothing about the raise.
“It’s an ‘oh, shit’ moment that they’re trying to figure out before the IG finds the email,” said one official. “Because it’ll be damn near impossible to have Sarah explain her way out of it.”
The two officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the email exchange between the HR representative and Greenwalt began floating around the EPA after the agency’s inspector general expanded its inquiry into Pruitt’s hiring practices, including raises.
It was reported last month that Pruitt requested hefty salary increases for Greenwalt and his scheduling director, Millan Hupp, and when the White House refused to sign off, he used language under the Safe Drinking Water Act to grant those two employees their promised raises.
Now, an investigation into whether Pruitt abused hiring authority is underway at the EPA.
Pruitt has maintained publicly that he was not aware of the raises, and has repeated that in multiple news interviews.
“My jaw dropped when he said that,” said the first administration official, stating that some within the agency where scared that Pruitt had gone on TV and lied.
Since his denials, and other financial mishandlings like flying first class and paying only $50 per night to stay in a condo in Washington D.C., there has been a call for President Trump to remove Pruitt. But Trump has continued to defend Pruitt and say he is “doing a great job” and will not be replaced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
