Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is a skilled grifter who is not above the law, said Rep. Paul Tonko of New York, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s environment panel.
Pruitt has a “propensity for grift,” Tonko said, as the first of two hearings began Thursday on the EPA’s fiscal 2019 budget. Democrats on the committees want to turn the hearings into a grilling of Pruitt over a series of accusations about extravagant spending on travel and security, renting a condo linked to an energy lobbyist, granting big pay raises against the White House’s wishes, and firing employees who disagreed with his travel spending.
“No one is above the law,” Tonko scolded. “The mounting evidence of serious ethics violations … cannot go unscrutinized,” he said.
“I know there are those in the majority that support rollbacks of EPA rules, but all of us should be troubled by the numerous reports of misuse of taxpayers dollars and apparent conflicts of interest that have made the administrator a frequent subject of investigation.”
The EPA inspector general as well as House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., are investigating the Pruitt allegations.
“In almost all cases, the more we have learned, the worse they get,” Tonko said, adding that the GOP would not stand for such behavior if it were a Democratic administrator.
