Pruitt’s first out-of-town trip after being sworn in was to address the association’s spring board meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. And the trade group backed several of the regulatory rollbacks he set in motion, including the repeal of Obama-era limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and a rule relaxing new reporting procedures for facilities that produce and store hazardous chemicals.

In November, Pruitt met in Washington with staff from the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry’s largest trade group — and an organization he had met with less than a month after being sworn in, EPA records show. EEI declined to comment.

Mitchell said the meetings were unrelated to Pruitt’s career.

Craft, a major Trump donor, began talking to Pruitt a few months ago about possible opportunities for the former administrator. He eventually retained Pruitt, according to two associates, to consult on overseas sales — an important market as the number of U.S. coal-fired power plants continues to shrink.

“Joe Craft has been a personal friend for many years, predating Scott’s tenure as EPA Administrator,” Mitchell said. “To suggest or infer anything to the contrary is false.”

While coal is no longer king in the United States, overseas the top 16 markets increased their U.S. coal imports by 13.2 percent during the third quarter of 2018 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

“It’s an increased demand for now, and the prices are high, so it’s a good market — for now,” said Tom Sanzillo, finance director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. He added that Craft’s company had outperformed its competitors this year, boosting its coal output by 6 percent while national production had dipped by 5 percent.

Alliance Resource Partners did not respond to multiple requests for comment but told The Post in September that any work Pruitt did for Craft, its CEO, would be in a “personal” capacity rather than as a firm employee.

In a third-quarter call with investors, Craft sounded upbeat about his company’s prospects. Saying that utilities have been “drawing down their stock” over the past couple of years, he predicted that they would order more coal in the year ahead.

As Pruitt returned to the private sector, his financial pressures were exacerbated by his legal burdens, according to public disclosures.

Pruitt complained of money woes while in office, telling friends and aides that even on his $189,600 salary, he was financially stretched, maintaining the mortgage on his $1.2 million home in Tulsa along with a new condo rental on Capitol Hill. While at the EPA, he enlisted the help of his staff in trying to find work for his wife — including having them contact the chief executive of Chick-fil-A about a franchising “opportunity.”

[Billionaire gave Pruitt $50,000 to defray legal debts in 2018]