Since Scott Pruitt was sworn in as Environmental Protection Agency administrator in February 2017, he’s worked diligently to gut regulations intended to protect both human health and the planet, suppressed scientific research, and generally done the bidding of his buddies in the oil and gas industries. Which makes it all the more impressive that in addition to being one of the most effective implementers of Donald Trump’s agenda, he’s had time for a second incredibly demanding job: full-time, sad-sack, dime-store corruption.

Though the last entry in the Scott Pruitt Grifter canon involved used mattresses, the latest is somehow even more pathetic, revolving around his wife, fast food, and, of course, abuse of government resources. According to a new report from The Washington Post, three months after Pruitt started his new gig in Washington—while he was living in an apartment rented to him for $50 a night by a lobbyist who had business before the E.P.A.—he had his executive scheduler reach out to Dan Cathy, chairman and president of Chick-fil-A, to request a meeting to discuss a “potential business opportunity.” Perhaps aware of the fact that his ask might come off a bit shady, Pruitt kept the “opportunity” a secret until he met with someone from the company’s legal department, after a scheduled call with Cathy was canceled. Only in person did Pruitt reveal that he was hoping for his wife, Marlyn, to become a Chick-fil-A franchisee, a highly sought-after and lucrative gig that some 40,000 people express interest in each year, with only 0.25 percent being selected, according to company representative Carrie Kurlander. But Pruitt’s interest in his wife running a Chick-fil-A apparently had nothing to do with the restaurant’s exceptional spicy chicken sandwiches, or its history of anti-gay activism: according to multiple current and former E.P.A aides, Pruitt had “told them he was eager for his wife to start receiving a salary,” apparently expressing frustration “in part [at] the high cost of maintaining homes in both Washington and Oklahoma.” (In Oklahoma, the Pruitts have an $850,000 mortgage on their home, the financing for which was provided by a bank run by a guy named Albert Kelly—Kelly, who was recently barred from working in the finance industry, had the good fortune to bounce back with a job as one of Pruitt’s top E.P.A. aides.) The E.P.A. declined the Post’s request for comment.

Sadly for Pruitt, his questionable use of government resources did not pay off (“Administrator Pruitt’s wife started, but did not complete, the Chick-fil-A franchisee application,” Kurlander said in a statement), although it wasn’t for lack of trying and potentially violating federal ethics laws in the process! As Don Fox, former head of the federal Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration, told the Post, a cabinet official using his position to ask a C.E.O. about a job for his spouse “raises the specter of misuse of public office. . . . It’s not much different [from] if he [had] asked the aide to facilitate getting a franchise for himself.” And asking his scheduler, Sydney Hupp, to set up the meeting may represent a violation of federal rules that prevent officials from asking subordinates to do personal tasks for them: the same rule Pruitt likely broke when he asked another subordinate to source him a previously owned Trump hotel mattress. “It is a misuse of the aide’s time to ask the aide to do something like this that is really for personal financial benefit,” Fox said.

Luckily, Pruitt was able to score some extra cash in May 2017, when his wife was paid $2,000 for three days’ work: helping to organize an event for New York nonprofit Concordia. Pruitt, who agreed to speak at the event, came with “at least” three aides in tow and spent $1,201.80 on first-class plane tickets and $669 for an overnight hotel stay, where we can only assume he demanded an upgrade to the presidential suite. (In a statement, Concordia executive Matthew Swift said “Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Pruitt ever solicited a position for Mrs. Pruitt at Concordia, nor was it a condition of the agreement for the administrator to speak.”)