Scott Pruitt

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Scott Pruitt, 2017

Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968 in Danville , Kentucky ) is an American lawyer, lobbyist and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma . He was Attorney General of Oklahoma from 2010 to 2017 and from February 17, 2017 until his resignation on July 5, 2018, he was Head of the American Environmental Protection Agency in the Trump Cabinet .

Life

In 2001, when Congressman Steve Largent decided not to be re-elected in Oklahoma's 1st electoral district , Pruitt ran unsuccessfully for the Republican Party's nomination as a candidate for the US Congress . In the 2002 election cycle, Pruitt was re-elected unopposed to the Oklahoma Senate . Rather than getting confirmed in 2006, Pruitt embarked on an ultimately failed campaign to get the Republican nomination for the election of Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma. He was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma in 2010 to succeed Drew Edmondson .

On December 7, 2016, US President-elect Donald Trump announced Pruitt as his candidate to head the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Six Democratic Senate MPs and the Public Works Committee then asked for more information from Pruitt's connections with oil industry organizations. This includes the Freedom Partners organization run by the Koch brothers and the Oklahoma- based company Devon Energy . Pruitt served as Head of the EPA during Donald Trump's presidency from his endorsement by the United States Senate from February 17, 2017 until his resignation on July 5, 2018 .

Act

Scott Pruitt (2003)

Pruitt is a climate change denier and is considered a staunch opponent of environmental and climate protection measures , who has been professionally involved for years in fighting global warming and preventing climate policy . During his time as attorney general, he was one of the driving figures in the fight against President Obama's climate protection concepts. Together with other Republican attorneys general and companies from the energy industry, he sat down u. a. against measures for environmental, climate and health protection . Among other things, he fought against limit values ​​for air pollution in national parks , methane leaks from natural gas production, and mercury and arsenic emissions from coal-fired power plants, and tried to have the protection status of an endangered prairie grouse lifted, which he saw as a threat to oil and gas production. As a lawyer, he sued the state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a total of thirteen times between 2011 and 2016. In 2014, he had an oil and gas company write a complaint against the EPA under his official letterhead. Since 2002, he has received more than $ 300,000 from fossil fuel companies.

Shortly before his confirmation in the Senate, a court ordered the disclosure of Pruitt's official emails while serving as attorney general. Close contacts between Pruitt and various companies such as Devon Energy and lobby organizations such as Americans for Prosperity , American Legislative Exchange Council and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers became known. Among other things, Pruitt and these companies and organizations coordinated meetings, telephone calls and dinners in joint action against environmental and climate protection guidelines. Pruitt had corporate lobbyists and lawyers write him several templates for letters of complaint and lawsuits against the EPA, which he then took over. The Devon Energy public relations department explicitly identified the positions that Pruitt should take over; This was followed by a thank you email from Pruitt's office for the help. In 2013, for example, Pruitt's office coordinated with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers lobby group to undo two EPA regulations that included the use of renewable energies and the limitation of smog-causing chemicals. Lobby group members met with Pruitt and proposed text for him; An official of the organization wrote that the arguments put forward against this regulation would be more credible if they were put forward by the state. A few months later, Pruitt made the two applications. Thanked u for Pruitt's help. a. Matt Ball, Chairman of Americans for Prosperity, while Pruitt's office again sent thank-you letters to Devon Energy for the "uncanny" support. The purpose of these activities was to soften or even prevent environmental protection regulations.

In October 2017 it became known that between February and May 2017, Pruitt, as head of the EPA environmental agency, met almost daily with executives and lobbyists of industrial companies regulated by the EPA. On the other hand, he almost never met with environmental protection, consumer protection and health protection organizations during the same period. An EPA spokeswoman defended Pruitt's frequent meetings with industrial companies. The EPA has been a prime example of excessive regulation in the past, so the EPA is now meeting with all those who have been ignored under the Obama presidency.

On his last day of work before his resignation, the EPA allowed several small truck manufacturers to use a legal loophole that would allow them to greatly expand the construction of trucks with old engines that emit around 55 times as many air pollutants as modern trucks. Several smaller manufacturers of such trucks had praised Pruitt for this regulation, which afterwards spoke out in favor of its implementation despite widespread criticism from environmental associations, large truck manufacturers and the transport industry.

According to many EPA employees, the time under Pruitt was the low point in the almost 50-year history of the EPA. A senior EPA official told the Guardian that working under Pruitt's direction was just "crappy". The EPA staff would be “so sick of these people. We waited and wanted a few adults to show up. ”But“ dealing with the incessant stream of bullshit on the part of Pruitt and his cronies ”was tough. ("This sucks. It sucks big". "People are so done with these folks. We wanted and waited for some adults to show up. But the relentless tide of bullshit from Pruitt and his cronies is tough to deal with.")

Positions

According to environmental historian Leif Frederickson, Pruitt is hostile to the EPA's legal mandate to protect the environment and health. In March 2017, Pruitt said he did not think carbon dioxide emissions were a significant driver of global warming. There would be "enormous differences of opinion" about the effect of these emissions. That is why he does not believe that humans and their work are a "primary factor" in global warming. In research, however, there is practically unanimous scientific consensus that carbon dioxide released by human activities is the main cause of the current global warming.

In April 2017, Pruitt became the first high-ranking member of the Trump administration to speak out in favor of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement . The climate protection agreement, which was agreed jointly by almost 200 countries around the world at the end of 2015, is a bad deal, worsens the competitiveness of the US economy and contradicts the America First doctrine.

Pruitt is an evangelical Christian . In February 2018, he justified his desire to consume natural resources such as oil and coal with a biblical mandate. According to the Christian Bible, man has an obligation to "manage, cultivate and harvest" the natural resources with which he is blessed. During his time as State Senator in Oklahoma, he had already denied the existence of evolution as an "unproven theory" for which there was not "sufficient scientific facts". In his resignation letter to President Donald Trump, Pruitt wrote that it was "God's providence" that made Trump's presidency possible. He also believes that "the same providence" brought him to his post in Trump's cabinet.

Controversy

Pruitt's tenure as EPO chief was marked by a multitude of controversies and scandals that led to his resignation on July 5, 2018. In the previous week, various revelations had caused a particularly large number of negative headlines. In addition to his political decisions, which above all weakened or abolished environmental, health and climate protection regulations, numerous affairs aroused public interest. In mid-May 2018, at least 14 official investigations against Scott Pruitt were ongoing; including in the White House , in Congress and the environmental agency itself, three high-ranking officials left them. 170 Democratic and four Republican congressmen called for Pruitt to step down. At the beginning of May there were 11 official investigations.

Corruption allegations

During his tenure, accusations of corruption were raised against Pruitt several times. Shortly after his nomination as EPA chief, six US Democratic senators and the Public Works Committee asked for more information about Pruitt's connections with oil industry organizations. This includes the Freedom Partners organization run by the Koch brothers and the Oklahoma- based company Devon Energy . The brothers Charles and David Koch and other entrepreneurs from the oil and gas industry appeared as donors in Pruitt's election campaigns in Oklahoma . Interest groups from the Koch network also engaged in targeted lobbying in the Senate and Congress after Donald Trump's election in order to make Pruitt head of the EPA environmental agency. In total, he received over $ 300,000 in campaign donations from fossil energy companies.

In March 2018, it was announced that Pruitt was renting an apartment in Washington for the first six months of a pharmaceutical lobbyist who was married to an energy lobbyist. Both had donated to Pruitt during the election campaign. Pruitt only had to pay for actual nights; an overnight stay was $ 50. In total, Pruitt paid $ 6100 in rent over the 6 months he stayed in the apartment. According to real estate agents, market prices in the area are around $ 3,500 a month. One of the criticisms in this context is that Pruitt granted approval for a controversial oil pipeline in 2017, for which the husband of Pruitt's landlady had actively campaigned as an energy lobbyist.

Pruitt also instructed EPA employees to look for a job for his wife. First, an employee should contact the board of directors of a fast food chain to determine whether his wife could become a franchise owner. He later hired staff to organize a job for his wife with a republican organization where she would earn at least $ 200,000 a year.

Shortly before his resignation, it was also made public that Pruitt had kept a secret calendar in which he had entered secret meetings with industrial lobbyists that he wanted to keep from the public. In addition, employees are said to have removed references to these meetings. An employee who criticized this practice because of legal problems was fired. Pruitt also had employees pay for his hotel bookings with their own credit cards.

Waste of public money

Pruitt has been accused on several occasions of wasting public money. Among other things, his first year air travel cost more than $ 168,000 because Pruitt, contrary to the advice of his officials, always flew in first class or on charter flights. Pruitt justified this with a higher level of security in the first class. A charter flight flat rate for $ 100,000 per month he applied for was rejected by an employee. This was then transferred to a sentence. Frequent flights to his home state of Oklahoma were also criticized.

A lot of money also flowed into his office. Among other things, he had a $ 43,000 tap-proof telephone booth set up, and he had his office checked for eavesdropping devices for $ 3,000 and secured with biometric fingerprint scanners for $ 5,800. A request for a $ 70,000 bulletproof desk was turned down by a subordinate; this was then terminated. A total of five EPO officials, some of whom were high-ranking, were transferred, demoted or dismissed, who rejected Pruitt's procurement requests or were critical of him. In contrast, two employees he valued received salary increases of up to 50 percent, despite opposition from the White House.

reception

Because of its scandals and caused controversy, Pruitt was also controversial among Republicans. For example, the Republican MP Carlos Curbelo , who is considered moderate, said that Pruitt had “done his job terribly bad” and was “a disaster and embarrassment from day one”. The country is "far better off without him".

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted after his resignation that the scandals that Pruitt on the "answer for"'ve had, "passed in the opinion of his critics for ten resignations". The Stuttgarter Zeitung wrote in April 2018 that if you are looking for a particularly blatant candidate for extravagance and corruption in Donald Trump's dazzling cabinet, you cannot avoid Pruitt. Referring to Trump's statement that he wanted to drain the swamp in Washington, the Standard quoted Republican Senator Joni Ernst as saying that Pruitt was "as swampy as you can be." At the same time, they attested to Pruitt that "notorious mistrust" was paired with "shameless nepotism and an arrogance that made one think of Sun Kings".

Die Welt called Pruitt "a very blatant example of the smell of corruption that lies above the Trump administration" and in this context cited a resignation from the right-wing Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham , who said, "Pruitt is the swamp . Lay him dry ”had pronounced Pruitt's replacement. T-online.de described the collection of "offenses" as "hair-raising" and attested that he was "the most insolent man in Washington".

The scientific journal Nature commented in an editorial that the most remarkable thing about Pruitt's resignation was that he had come so late. Pruitt was "in every way not suited to lead one of the world's most important science-based regulatory authorities". "By far the worst" was "his sheer non-recognition of both science and scientists under his responsibility". In addition, during his one and a half year tenure, Pruitt never visited the Office of Research and Development, the EPA department in which the majority of EPA scientists work.

Donald Trump , however, praised Pruitt for his work. This was "outstanding" and they were "very happy" with him despite the controversy. Further praise for Pruitt came from Myron Ebell from the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Republican Senator Jim Inhofe , two central figures in the US climate denial scene.

Web links

Commons : Scott Pruitt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A coal lobbyist heads the American environmental agency . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 17, 2017, accessed on February 17, 2017.
  2. ^ A b Coral Davenport: Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA Chief, Resigns Under Cloud of Ethics Scandals . In: The New York Times , July 5, 2018. Retrieved July 5, 2018.
  3. ↑ politico.com: How Scott Pruitt blew it
  4. ↑ Valerie Volcovici, David Shepardson: Trump to pick foe of Obama climate agenda to run EPA -source. Reuters , December 7, 2016, accessed April 1, 2018 . Axel Postinett: New names for Trump's cabinet: sheer horror. In: Handelsblatt.com , December 8, 2016, accessed April 1, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c Rebecca Leber: Here are all the climate deniers and oil flacks who can't get enough of Trump's EPA pick. In: Mother Jones . January 9, 2017, accessed April 1, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Michael Brüggemann : The media and the climate lie. False skepticism and real denial . In: Volker Lilienthal , Irene Neverla (Hrsg.): "Lügenpresse": Anatomy of a political battle term . Cologne 2017, pp. 137–157, here p. 140.
  7. ↑ Coral Davenport, Eric Lipton: Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead EPA In: The New York Times , December 7, 2016, accessed April 1, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b Oliver Milman: Scott Pruitt's EPA: a dream for oil and gas groups but a nightmare for scientists . In: The Guardian , December 8, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016.
  9. ↑ Johanna Bruckner: Trump's environmental officer "snuggled" with the oil industry. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . February 23, 2017. Retrieved February 24, 2017 .
  10. ^ Coral Davenport, Eric Lipton: The Pruitt Emails: EPA Chief Was Arm in Arm With Industry. In: New York Times . February 22, 2017, accessed February 24, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Eric Lipton, Lisa Friedman: EPA Chief's Calendar: A Stream of Industry Meetings and Trips Home. In: The New York Times . October 3, 2017, accessed April 1, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Eric Lipton: 'Super-polluting' trucks given permission to ignore air pollution controls on Scott Pruitt's last day . In: The Independent , July 7, 2018. Retrieved July 8, 2018.
  13. ↑ EPA insiders bemoan low point in agency's history: 'People are so done'. In: The Guardian . July 5, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .
  14. ^ Leif Fredrickson: History of US Presidential Assaults on Modern Environmental Health Protection . In: American Journal of Public Health . tape 108 , S2, 2018, pp. S95-S103 , doi : 10.2105 / AJPH.2018.304396 .
  15. ↑ New US head of the environment: humans and CO₂ are innocent of global warming. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . March 10, 2017, accessed March 10, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis: Scott Pruitt calls for an 'exit' from the Paris accord, sharpening the Trump White House's climate rift . In: Washington Post , April 14, 2017, accessed April 15, 2017.
  17. ↑ Rebecca Leber: Scott Pruitt Is Gutting the EPA Because He Thinks It's God's Plan . In: Mother Jones , February 26, 2018, accessed March 2, 2018.
  18. ↑ Timothy Cama: Pruitt: Bible says 'harvest the natural resources' . In: The Hill , February 22, 2018, accessed February 23, 2018.
  19. ↑ Emily Holden, Alex Guillén: Pruitt tapes revealed: Evolution's a 'theory,' majority 'religions under attack . In: Politico , March 2, 2018, accessed March 2, 2018.
  20. ↑ US chief of the environment agency goes to scandal series . In: ZDF Today , July 6, 2018. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
  21. ↑ a b c E.PA Officials Sidelined After Questioning Scott Pruitt . In: The New York Times , April 5, 2018. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
  22. ↑ a b The long list of Scott Pruitt controversies. In: BBC . April 6, 2018, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  23. ↑ a b c d e f g With blue light to the bouillabaisse . In: stuttgarter-zeitung.de April 6, 2018. Accessed April 7, 2018.
  24. ↑ ; Emily Holden, Alex Guillén, Kelsey Tamborrino: The problems with Pruitt: A complete guide. In: Politico , April 26, 2018.
  25. ↑ Umair Irfan: Scott Pruitt, Trump's scandal-plagued EPA chief, has resigned. In: Vox. July 5, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .
  26. ^ Rebecca Leber: Scott Pruitt Just Testified Before Congress. It didn't go well. In: Mother Jones . May 16, 2018. Retrieved May 17, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Jennifer Jacobs: Another Top EPA Official Is Leaving, Sources Say. In: Bloomberg.com , May 3, 2018.
  28. ↑ Pruitt's Coziness With Lobbyists Includes Secretly Buying a House With One. In: The New York Times . May 3, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Jane Mayer : Scott Pruitt, Trump's Industry Pick for the EPA In: The New Yorker . December 7, 2016, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  30. ↑ Lee Fang, Nick Surgey: Koch Industries and other cooperations lobbied for Donald Trump's cabinet picks, filings show . In: The Intercept , April 25, 2017, accessed April 29, 2017.
  31. ^ As new details emerge, Scott Pruitt's housing arrangements come under scrutiny. In: Washington Post . March 30, 2018, accessed April 7, 2018 .
  32. ↑ Under Fire for Ethics Scandals, US EPA Chief Pruitt Resigns . In: The New York Times , July 5, 2018. Retrieved July 6, 2018.
  33. ↑ a b c Scott Pruitt resigns: Trump's scandal-ridden EPA chief steps down. In: The Guardian . July 5, 2018, accessed July 5, 2018 .
  34. ↑ a b Resignation of Scott Pruitt. Most insolent man in Washington. In: t-online.de . July 6, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .
  35. ↑ A series of scandals . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 6, 2018. Accessed July 7, 2018.
  36. ↑ Scandal-ridden US environment minister Pruitt resigns . In: DerStandard , July 6, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
  37. ↑ Fired EPA boss - He was the best man in Trump's administration . In: Die Welt , July 6, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
  38. ↑ With Pruitt gone, Trump and his allies continue to threaten the EPA . In: Nature . tape 559 , 2018, p. 301 , doi : 10.1038 / d41586-018-05744-3 .
  39. ↑ Scott Pruitt, Trump's embattled EPA chief, resigns amid ethics scandals . In: The Guardian , July 6, 2018. Retrieved July 7, 2018.
  40. ↑ Randy Showstack: Environmentalists Are Glad Pruitt Is Out but Worry What's Next . In: Eos . tape 99 , 2018, doi : 10.1029 / 2018EO102265 .
  41. ^ Riley E. Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright: Organized Climate Change Denial , in: John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, David Schlosberg (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society . Oxford University Press 2011, pp. 144-160, esp. 151 u. 153.
personal data
SURNAME Pruitt, Scott
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pruitt, Edward Scott
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lawyer and Republican politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Danville , Kentucky