A former top Environmental Protection Agency staffer said Monday Administrator Scott Pruitt was “bald-faced lying” when he told members of Congress last week that he did not retaliate against employees who questioned his spending on security and travel.
Former EPA deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski told ABC News he was “100 percent” forced out of the agency after raising concerns about Pruitt’s spending on first-class travel.
Chmielewski, who worked on the campaign staff for President Trump, said a manager called him into his office and said: “Hey — Administrator Pruitt either wants me to fire you or put you in an office so that he doesn’t have to see you again.”
Chmielewski, acting as a whistleblower, told Democratic lawmakers behind closed doors this month that he was pushed out of the EPA after he refused to approve first-class travel retroactively for another agency aide.
He said that Pruitt wanted his aide, Samantha Dravis, the head of the EPA’s Office of Policy, to join him in first class on a return flight from Morocco in December, where Pruitt traveled to promote U.S. natural gas.
The EPA’s inspector general’s office is reviewing the Morocco trip, which critics say was not compatible with the agency’s mission.
Chmielewski said he refused to approve Dravis’ first-class travel retroactively “because it violated federal travel regulations.”
The Democratic lawmakers who spoke with Chmielewski say he told them his refusal to sign off on Dravis’ first-class travel “appears to him to have been the final straw that caused you to remove him.”
Ryan Jackson, Pruitt’s chief of staff, soon informed Chmielewski that Pruitt “wished to fire or reassign him.”
Chmielewski told ABC News he previously raised concerns about Pruitt’s first-class flights and a request to spend $100,000 a month on a private jet. He said he met with the presidential personnel office about EPA’s spending.
“They didn’t wanna touch it with a ten-foot pole,” Chmielewski said. “Understandably. I mean, at this point I’m going up against a Cabinet secretary. Who wants to do that? I sure didn’t want to, and still don’t want to. But that’s apparently where I’m at now,” he said.
Chmielewski is one of at least five officials, four of them high-ranking, who the EPA reassigned or demoted after they reportedly raised concerns about Pruitt’s spending habits, the New York Times previously reported.
Pruitt testified to the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week that there is “no truth” to the reports that some EPA employees have faced retaliation after disagreeing with his spending or management decisions.
“I just want to emphasize very, very clearly to you that there’s no actions that we have taken that I’m aware of related in any way to the issues you raise as far as reassignment or employment action based upon that,” Pruitt told lawmakers.
Pruitt is the subject of more than 10 federal investigations.
The roster of issues under federal investigation include Pruitt’s $50-per-night condo rental deal with the wife of an energy lobbyist who had business before the EPA, his spending of more than $3 million on security, his $43,000 secure phone booth, frequent first-class travel, and the allegations that he retaliated against employees who questioned his judgment.
Pruitt’s supporters have defended questions about his ethics and spending, portraying critical reports as a campaign organized by liberal detractors of his deregulatory agenda at the EPA.
But Chmielewski is a former Trump campaign aide who previously worked for former President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Mitt Romney.
“I’m a pretty credible source,” Chmielewski told ABC News. “No one in this world can say that I’m not a Republican and no one in this world can say that I’m not the biggest fan of the president or the vice president. I would still go through a brick wall for the guy today, either one of them.”
