Pruitt’s conservative support cracks

Scott Pruitt drew fire Wednesday from conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, who urged President Donald Trump to dump the scandal-scarred EPA administrator — the latest sign that his support among Republicans is crumbling.

Ingraham, the popular radio and Fox News host, is the highest-profile conservative so far to call for Trump to fire Pruitt, who is widely disliked inside the White House after a string of ethical and spending controversies.


“PRUITT BAD JUDGMENT HURTING @POTUS, GOTTA GO,” Ingraham tweeted, while linking to a Washington Post report that Pruitt had pressed his staff to ask GOP donors to help find a job for his wife, Marlyn, who later secured a job at a conservative legal group.

The conservative National Review piled on later Wednesday, calling for Pruitt to be replaced.

"This is no way for any public official to treat taxpayers. It also makes it practically impossible for Pruitt to make the case for the Trump administration’s environmental policies — a case that we continue to believe deserves to be made," the magazine's senior editors wrote. "It does not help that Pruitt’s conduct has left him nearly alone at the agency. Many of his top aides have fled and paranoia seems to consume those who remain."

So far, Trump has stuck with Pruitt, praising him for rolling back Obama administration environmental rules that conservatives had complained were strangling industry. The New York Times has reported recently that Trump speaks with Pruitt frequently about his displeasure with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But last week Trump did acknowledge the series of scandals, telling reporters that "I'm not saying that he's blameless, but we'll see what happens."

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Ingraham is one of the 46 people whom the president follows on Twitter, and she was considered for the role of Trump’s press secretary in 2016. She dined at Trump's hotel Tuesday evening with Donald Trump Jr. and conservative activists Charlie Kirk and Andy Surabian — both of whom publicly defended Pruitt in early April.

On her radio show Wednesday, she said Pruitt's scandals were damaging the president and reflected the EPA chief's repeated “judgment lapses.”

“He’s hurting the president because he has bad judgment after bad judgment after bad judgment,” she said. “It just doesn’t look good. If you want to drain the swamp, you got to have people in it who forgo personal benefits.”

Pruitt, who is facing a dozen congressional and EPA investigations into his spending on security and first-class travel, a sweetheart condo rental from a lobbyist, his use of aides to handle his personal business and unauthorized raises for close aides, is also seeing his star fade in Congress, where some of his most stalwart backers now express doubts about his behavior.

On Ingraham's radio show, Pruitt ally Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) agreed that the continued revelations were troubling, and he said he would send a “communication” to EPA on Wednesday warning the embattled chief to cut it out. And he suggested that EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former Inhofe aide, was well-qualified to run the agency, and could step in for Pruitt.

Inhofe later stressed that he was not calling for Pruitt's ouster, but he called for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to bring Pruitt in for a hearing.

Other Republican lawmakers appeared irritated by the latest Pruitt scandal, including Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who said the EPA's chief's request for aides to find a job for his wife with political donors was not appropriate. "Is there more to the story? I don’t know. Should we find out? Yeah,” she said.

Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who has accused Pruitt of being as "swampy as you get" in his biofuels policies, criticized him Wednesday as "a bad actor in so many different areas."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ernst have been among Pruitt's harshest critics on the Hill because of efforts to ease EPA-managed corn ethanol mandates that provide a lifeline to many Iowa farmers. Those moves have also galvanized some farm interests, such as the Iowa-based American Future Fund, which is airing an ad in Nebraska and South Dakota blasting Pruitt's ethical problems. “Scott Pruitt is a swamp monster,” the 30-second spot says. “Mr. President, you know what to do,” it continues, before playing a clip of Trump from his former "The Apprentice" reality show declaring, “You’re fired.”

Democratic lawmakers have for weeks blasted Pruitt, calling the work done by his staff for his personal benefit an illegal act. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who has asked the FBI to investigate Pruitt, said Wednesday's report was perhaps the most egregious violation yet.

"Pruitt's actions here were certainly illegal, and astonishingly corrupt even for him," Beyer tweeted.

Still, some Pruitt allies in Congress said they were sticking by him and blamed his political opponents for the scandals.

“He needs to learn to be more careful. I know him to be an ethical and honorable person,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said. “Up here, you’ve got to be a little bit like Caesar's wife: just above suspicion. You have a lot of people that are going to be critical of him not because of who he is or what he does, but because of his policy agenda.”

The Post reported Wednesday that Pruitt had asked his policy adviser Samantha Dravis to help his wife find a job. Pruitt first sought help from one prominent GOP donor, Doug Deason, who said he could not hire her because of a conflict of interest given his business before EPA.

Deason also helped Pruitt pick new members for EPA’s Science Advisory Board last year, POLITICO reported last week.

But Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the conservative Federalist Society, eventually helped her secure a temporary contractor job with the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, the Post reported. Leo also helped arrange Pruitt’s visit to Italy last year, and even initially paid for an expensive Rome meal, though Pruitt eventually reimbursed him.

A JCN spokesperson said that Marlyn Pruitt worked as a temporary independent contractor who helped organize the setup of new offices. JCN said she worked for them from fall 2017 to spring 2018, although the number of hours and her total pay for that time is unknown.

Dravis, who is due to speak to House Oversight investigators later this month, has since departed EPA and declined to comment.

The news follows other recent reports that Pruitt used his position to seek out a possible Chick-fil-A franchise for his wife and got her a temporary job helping organize a conference for the nonprofit group Concordia.

Alex Guillén contributed to this report.

