Courtesy Steve Benen, today’s scandal is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s living arrangements in Washington, as explained by Bloomberg Politics:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s lease at a Washington apartment owned by a lobbyist friend allowed him to pay $50 a night for a single bedroom — but only on the nights when he actually slept there.
Not so bad?
The owner is a health care lobbyist, Vicki Hart. Her husband J. Steven Hart, is also a lobbyist and his firm represents clients in industries regulated by the EPA.
Ooops. But there’s more, as Steve helpfully notes:
ABC News reported yesterday on a first-class trip Pruitt took to Morocco late last year – it cost $40,000 and you paid for it – in order to have the EPA chief pitch “the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy.” …
But what makes this story so much worse is the second half of the controversy. As ABC News added, “Cheniere Energy Inc. owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time.”
Why is that important? Because for much of 2017, Pruitt “occupied prime real estate in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol that is co-owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist, property records from 2017 show.”
The lobbyist’s firm specifically lobbies on liquid natural gas exports.
Pruitt’s a real Swamp Monster, apparently. But it was Steve’s last comment that caught my attention:
Postscript: Twelve years ago, with Republicans controlling the White House, the Senate, and the House, Democrats had a fair amount of success running against the GOP’s “culture of corruption.”
The party may want to consider dusting off that playbook.
I actually have to kinda wonder about that. After all, when it’ll actually take three or four minutes just to list all the scandals in the White House as well as Congress, before getting to the full scale ineptitude and rank incompetence, well, no one will sit still for a political ad of that magnitude.
But it’s like Fogo de Chão for wolves and lions.
