Trump tweeted the news Thursday afternoon, and said Pruitt's deputy, Andrew Wheeler , would at least temporarily take on his role beginning Monday, July 9.

Scott Pruitt, one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial and effective cabinet secretaries, is resigning from the Environmental Protection Agency after months of unending ethical scandals.

...on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!

In a conversation with reporters Thursday evening, the president lauded Pruitt for getting "rid of record-breaking regulations."

However, he did acknowledge that there were "controversies with Scott."

"Scott is a terrific guy. And he came to me and he said, 'I have such great confidence in the administration.' I don’t want to be a distraction," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. "I think Scott felt that he was a distraction.”



While Pruitt's resignation was "very much up to him," Trump said the two had been discussing it "for a couple of days."

"We've been talking about it for a little while," he said, adding that he believes Pruitt will "go on to do great things and he's going to have a wonderful life."

As for Wheeler, who is a former coal lobbyist, the president called him "a very environmental person. He’s a big believer, and he’s going to do a fantastic job."

Pruitt's exit comes just a day after he joined Trump and other administration officials at the White House for a Fourth of July celebration.

Pruitt has faced heavy scrutiny for potential ethical lapses tied to his spending, housing, treatment of staff, relationships with energy leaders, and travel on the job. A federal watchdog in April found the EPA violated two laws when it spent $43,000 on a secure phone booth for Pruitt without first seeking permission from Congress. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has also announced an investigation into the purchase.



Most recently, Pruitt has drawn scrutiny for asking aides to assist with his wife’s job search, including approaching Chick-fil-A; using his staff to run errands for him, like getting fancy lotion sold at Ritz-Carlton hotels and look into getting a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel for Pruitt’s own use; and for the EPA reportedly “scrubbing” his public calendar of certain meetings.

There are more than a dozen open investigations into Pruitt by government watchdogs, the Office of Special Counsel, Congress, and the White House. One overlapping area of scrutiny is Pruitt’s leasing of an apartment near Capitol Hill for $50 a night for some of last year from the wife of an energy lobbyist. One of the clients of the lobbyist, the New York Times reported, got a pipeline expansion approved while Pruitt was staying at the apartment. Pruitt and the partial owner of the apartment have denied any impropriety.

EPA officials at first appeared to clear the condo arrangement of all ethics allegations once it became public. But a bombshell memo by the agency’s top ethics official said the initial review was narrow in scope and based on limited information.

Pruitt, in his resignation letter to the president, said it has been an "honor" to serve in Trump's cabinet but that the "the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us." He wrote that his "desire in service to you has always been to bless you as you make important decisions for the American people." He added, "I believe you are serving as President today because of God’s providence."

"History will not judge him well and let's just hope this guy never gets near another government agency," Judith A. Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, told BuzzFeed News after Trump announced Pruitt's exit.



Christine Todd Whitman, EPA chief under George W. Bush, told BuzzFeed News in an emailed statement that “For the sake of the reputation of Agency and the Administration, it is way past time for Scott Pruitt to have resigned."



Since becoming EPA’s chief in February 2017, Pruitt has overseen a massive rollback of environmental rules, overhauled the agency’s science advisory boards, met far more often with industry groups than environmentalists, put a political appointee in charge of grants, and de-emphasized climate change. Aside from just shifting policy, these changes have resulted in low morale at the agency, and hundreds of staff departures.

In a congressional hearing in late April, Pruitt blamed opponents of his deregulatory agenda for the focus on potential ethical lapses. "Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to derail the president's agenda,” he told a House committee. Conservative groups supportive of Pruitt’s rule rollback have largely come to his defense in the ethical storm. "We're getting the word out that Administrator Pruitt is doing a good job in implementing the president's agenda and Administrator Pruitt is a key part of that agenda," Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told E&E News in April.

But as more allegations keep coming out, even some of Pruitt’s conservative allies lost patience. Sen. James Inhofe, Pruitt’s longtime political backer from Oklahoma, questioned his judgment in June. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham has called for Pruitt to go. Editors of the National Review, a conservative news magazine, also called for Pruitt’s departure in a June 13 editorial.