EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt admitted Thursday that he authorized his chief of staff to give pay raises to two of his closest aides, contradicting claims he made in an interview just weeks earlier.

Pruitt said during a congressional hearing Thursday that he was only unaware of the amount of the raises and the process by which they were approved, though he had told Fox News earlier this month he had no knowledge at all of the raises.

"I did not know that they got the pay raises until yesterday," Pruitt said in the Fox News interview, referring to public reports about the raises.

He had also told Fox that he did not know who had approved the raise.

Several senior EPA officials reacted in shock Thursday. One EPA official told CNN that a sense of "a collective 'Oh sh**' came out of EPA HQ" when Pruitt admitted he knew of the raises.

Aides for weeks knew that Pruitt had lied in his Fox News interview, but were stunned that he contradicted himself so publicly on Thursday.