WASHINGTON — Embattled Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt enlisted a staffer to work with key Republican donors — including a top Trump supporter from Dallas — to find a job for his wife, according to a new report.

The talks may have led to Marlyn Pruitt landing a temporary role with the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, according to The Washington Post, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, and have raised new questions about Pruitt's handling of taxpayer dollars and use of his official role for personal gain.

Though the Dallas donor, Doug Deason, cited conflicts of interest for why he wouldn't hire Marlyn Pruitt, on Wednesday he defended the administrator’s inquiry as “reasonable” and played down the former EPA staffer’s role in those talks.

Deason, who with his father, Darwin, has close ties to the Trump administration, was among those who championed the former attorney general of Oklahoma for the EPA position. He’s known Pruitt for about four years, he said, and considers him a friend. He also helped select members for an EPA Science Advisory Board last year.

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, Deason said he and Pruitt spoke "friend to friend" about employment opportunities for his wife in late 2016.

At the time, Pruitt was on President Donald Trump's shortlist to become the head of the environmental agency and was contemplating the financial realities of a move to Washington while maintaining the couple's home in Oklahoma, Deason said. Trump announced Pruitt as his pick on Dec. 7, 2016, and he was confirmed the following February.

“It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask,” Deason said, adding that Marlyn Pruitt had been a stay-at-home mother and “he was going to need her to go back to work to supplement the family income” if he was confirmed.

“That’s the problem with taking that position — you have to be already independently wealthy” or a D.C. insider to be able to afford it, Deason said.

The Dallas businessman confirmed that he did not hire Marlyn Pruitt because his company, Deason Capital Services, has a stake in the oil and gas company Foreland Resources, which falls under the agency’s purview. Deason said he told Pruitt that he’d help brainstorm other opportunities for his wife.

He confirmed that, as part of those talks, he corresponded with Samantha Dravis, Pruitt's longtime adviser who also served as associate administrator for the EPA’s Office of Policy. He also spoke with Pruitt’s outside counsel, Cleta Mitchell, about the matter.

Neither Mitchell nor Dravis, who left the EPA in April, could be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday.

Deason said that once Pruitt took office, Dravis was “lightly involved” in screening whether Marlyn Pruitt’s potential employers would have a conflict of interest with the EPA, but that Dravis eventually directed him to Mitchell and stepped out of the role. “I always felt that they handled it really well,” Deason said.

Ethical violation?

Some ethics experts disagree. It’s against federal ethics rules for public officials to use their positions for personal profit or to receive free services from employees.

Virginia Canter, executive branch ethics counsel for the public watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Post that tapping a full-time EPA employee to "become the headhunter for his spouse" was "highly inappropriate" as the outcome "would affect his financial interests."

Dravis declined to comment in The Post's report, but the news outlet cited an anonymous source who said that she complained to friends that she was uncomfortable with the request.

According to the newspaper, Pruitt did not consult ethics officials about the effort.

A spokesman for the Judicial Crisis Network confirmed to the outlet that it employed Marlyn Pruitt, a former school nurse, "temporarily" as an independent contractor. Politico reports that she worked there from fall 2017 to spring 2018, though the organization hasn't disclosed what she was paid.

The spokesman also said the group received Pruitt's resume from an executive vice president of the Federalist Society. Pruitt left earlier this year on good terms, according to the outlet.

Series of headaches

It's the latest headache for Pruitt, who has faced repeated questions over his personal ethics and management of taxpayer dollars. Just last week, reports emerged that he asked a staffer to reach out to the head of Chick-fil-A to inquire about obtaining a franchise for his wife.

In April, the Government Accountability Office said he violated federal spending laws when he spent $43,000 to install a soundproof phone booth inside the EPA. He's also come under scrutiny for renting a bedroom from the wife of an energy lobbyist, spending $1,500 on a dozen fountain pens, requesting a 24/7 security detail and first-class airline seats, and asking aides to run personal errands for him, such as inquiring about buying a used Trump hotel mattress.

Some of his supporters, including Deason, blame what they say is a biased media for the investigations.

But after The Post story published, Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted: "Pruitt bad judgment hurting POTUS, gotta go."

PRUITT BAD JUDGMENT HURTING @POTUS, GOTTA GO: Pruitt had aide, GOP donors help wife find job: report https://t.co/p7dhOK58Sh — Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 13, 2018

Appearing on her radio show on Wednesday, Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, a Republican, said he would send a “communication” to Pruitt over the latest report.

"All these things that are coming out are really not good things," Inhofe said, adding he's taken the position that "if that doesn't stop, I'm going to be forced to be in a position where I'm going to say, 'Well, Scott, you're not doing your job.'"

Pruitt has so far maintained the confidence of donors like Deason and appears to remain in good standing with Trump, who last week said that Pruitt is “doing a great job within the walls of the EPA.”

Deason said he and other GOP donors, who consider Pruitt among Trump’s most effective Cabinet members and a champion for deregulation, are urging the president not to take action against him.

Last week, Deason defended Pruitt after reports that he stocked a science advisory board from a list provided by Deason and Kathleen Hartnett White, a fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation whose White House nomination for a job overseeing environmental policy was dropped.

In a text to The News at the time, Deason called Pruitt a "friend and committed conservationist" and said he has "no way to benefit from any decisions the EPA makes, contrary to the conclusions the Sierra Club and Politico have jumped to, liberal rags that they are."