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US EPA chief Pruitt faces increased heat, senior staff members resign

SNL Image

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt attends a June 6 cabinet briefing on this year's hurricane season at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Source: AP Images

Two key aides to Scott Pruitt announced their resignation June 6 as a flurry of new revelations emerged of questionable behavior by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief.

The EPA confirmed in an email that Millan Hupp, Pruitt's director of scheduling and advance, tendered her resignation and will serve her last day at the agency on June 8. Hours later, the New York Times reported that senior advisor Sarah Greenwalt would be leaving the agency as well. In a June 7 statement, the EPA confirmed Greenwalt's departure and said her last day will be June 13. Both Hupp and Greenwalt previously served Pruitt when he was the attorney general of the state of Oklahoma.

Hupp's resignation comes days after the ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released testimony from a May 18 interview with the EPA staffer. During that interview, Hupp confirmed to lawmakers that she had been directed by the administrator to conduct personal tasks on agency time. Those tasks included booking personal travel, inquiring with the managing director of the Trump International Hotel about "securing an old mattress," and visiting 10 or more rental properties during work hours.

In addition, emails secured through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Sierra Club showed that Sydney Hupp, sister of Millan Hupp, planned meetings for Pruitt with an executive at Chick-fil-A to discuss a franchise opportunity for Pruitt's wife.

In the letter accompanying Millan Hupp's testimony, Democrats Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Gerry Connolly of Virginia asked committee chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to subpoena Pruitt to obtain documents being "withheld" by the EPA relating to Pruitt's "multiple abuses of authority in using agency staff for his own personal purposes." Gowdy, a Republican, has been critical of Pruitt's questionable expenses and has been seeking documents from the EPA related to Pruitt's use of first class travel and a lease agreement signed by Pruitt and the wife of an industry lobbyist.

Pruitt scrutinized for RFS reforms

Meanwhile, more Republicans in recent weeks have started to criticize Pruitt, including Iowa senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, who have balked at Pruitt's handling of reforms to the renewable fuel standard.

Ernst, in a June 5 appearance at the S&P Global Platts Energy Podium in Washington, D.C., called the biofuels reforms a "bad deal" for ethanol producers and farmers even though they would expand sales of higher-ethanol fuel blends.

Ernst has been involved in several rounds of negotiations with the White House on the reforms. Following the latest round, the parties agreed to year-round sales of gasoline blended with 15% ethanol and allow ethanol exports to receive trading credits EPA issues to track production and use of alternative transportation fuels. The lawmaker said Pruitt has expanded the use of RFS hardship waivers, which has eroded biofuel demand.

"I am hopeful that the president will just recognize that Mr. Pruitt is breaking our president's promises to farmers and, at some point, he will say, 'It's time for you to go.' But that's up to the president to make that call. I will remain highly critical of Administrator Pruitt," Ernst said.

While Ernst supported Pruitt's nomination, she said his many scandals are concerning: "He is about as swampy as you get here in Washington, D.C."

By June 6, Trump had tipped towards Ernst's side of the biofuels debate and the White House reportedly canceled a planned announcement on the reforms. "I did you a good favor for the farmers yesterday. Right? We love the farmers. Right, Joni?" Trump said during remarks at the signing of a Veterans Affairs bill.

But Trump remains supportive of Pruitt, who appeared with the president hours after the event with Ernst for a cabinet briefing on the upcoming hurricane season.

"Thank you, Scott, very much. EPA is doing very, very well. Somebody has to say that. You know that, Scott. ... So many approvals and disapprovals," Trump told Pruitt according to a pool report.

Pruitt has long found support from Sen. James Inhofe, a fellow Oklahoma Republican, who has dismissed concerns about the administrator's first-class travel and other issues raised about his leadership. But in response to the news of the Chick-Fil-A meetings, Inhofe told CBS News that if the revelations about the meetings are true, "it would not be a good thing."

"The problem is I've known him for so long and I just can't see him doing something like that. So I'm going to assume that's not true," Inhofe told reporters.

Speaking to reporters after the hurricane briefing, Pruitt did not deny that he had sought the meetings. He said his wife is "an entrepreneur," and that he and his wife "love Chick-Fil-A."

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