Scott Pruitt’s eternally awaited exit says less about the Trump administration than its lasting enthusiasm for an Environmental Protection Agency chief who accumulated a baker’s dozen of ethics investigations. Pruitt’s rapacious personal and governing philosophy so embodies the president’s that one wonders whether he was finally excommunicated for trumping Trump.

From discount digs rented from an energy lobbyist’s wife to an aide’s effort to get a fried-chicken franchise for Pruitt’s wife, the scandals spoke of a determination to get anything and everything he could from his position. The EPA administrator gave cronies unapproved raises, broke spending limits to install a $43,000 phone booth, and flew first-class to Disneyland and other destinations on the taxpayers’ tab.

These excesses were emblematic of Pruitt’s will to let all manner of private industries have their way with the public’s air, water, land and other resources with far more ruinous results. He spearheaded U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accords, moved to ease coal-fired power plant emissions, and went so far in attacking California’s fuel efficiency standards as to give automakers pause. Many more of his efforts to unleash pollution and poisons were hampered by scandal and sloppiness.

Pruitt’s deputy and successor for the time being, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, could hardly loot the treasury more thoroughly than his predecessor. The danger is that he or another like-minded but less venal administrator could be even more effective at enabling further plunder on a national scale.

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