The hug and the bullet to the head:  Scott Pruitt appears before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies on budget on Capitol Hill in Washington.

Pruitt was at the White House for the Fourth of July celebration yesterday, in just the latest instance of him being held closely. Trump gave him and other officials a brief shout-out, offering no sign of any immediate change in his job – Insiders say the party invite was just the latest sign of Pruitt’s proximity to Trump, despite the obvious political cost of keeping a scandal-tarred administrator of a cabinet agency. Others departed following revelations of private jet use alone.
Minutes after Trump confirmed Pruitt’s departure, House Oversight Committee Democrats dropped a transcript with the exact language used by his longtime aide, Samantha Dravis, describing a 2018 effort by Pruitt to upstage Attorney General Jeff sessions as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer.
To all intents and purposes, Pruitt was gunning for a top-level promotion despite the onslaught of sleaze oozing from his time at the EPA.
Dravis, Pruitt’s former policy chief at EPA, told the investigators last week that Pruitt had made clear to her before and after he became EPA administrator that he would like the attorney general’s job, held then and now by Jeff Sessions.
But he also was likely cognizant of the Vacancies Act, which allows a Senate confirmed official to run a cabinet department for a prolonged period should a vacancy occur.
‘He had conversations with me about media speculation around the possibility that he could become the next Attorney General,’ Dravis testified.
‘It’s my sense that that’s a position that he would be very interested in,’ she told the committee.
It is something Pruitt told her he spoke to the president about.
In his resignation letter released to media outlets, Pruitt expressed no regret for any actions he had taken since being tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year.
“It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring,” Pruitt wrote.
“However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.”
Pruitt’s resignation came days after two of his former senior staffers spoke to House oversight committee investigators and revealed new, embarrassing details in ethics allegations against Pruitt.
The former Oklahoma attorney general was perceived by many as too close to the oil and gas industry to serve as an effective regulator over the industry.
Pruitt had filed more than a dozen lawsuits against the agency he was picked to lead. Arriving in Washington, he worked relentlessly to dismantle Obama-era environmental regulations that aimed to reduce toxic pollution and planet-warming carbon emissions.
During his one-year tenure, Pruitt crisscrossed the country at taxpayer expense to speak with industry groups and hobnob with GOP donors, but he showed little interest in listening to advocates he derided as “the environmental left.” Those groups applauded his departure.
“Despite his brief tenure, Pruitt was the worst EPA chief in history,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “His corruption was his downfall, but his pro-polluter policies will have our kids breathing dirtier air long after his many scandals are forgotten.”
Pruitt shared the president’s skepticism about mainstream climate science and was a fierce critic of the Paris climate agreement. Cheered on by Trump, the EPA chief moved towards boosting fossil fuel production and roll back regulations opposed by corporate interests.
Pruitt’s job had been in jeopardy since the end of March, when ABC News first reported that he leased a Capitol Hill condo last year for just $50 a night. It was co-owned by the wife of a veteran fossil fuels lobbyist whose firm had sought regulatory rollbacks from EPA. Both Pruitt and the lobbyist, Steven Hart, denied he had conducted any recent business with EPA.
Hart was later forced to admit he had met with Pruitt at EPA headquarters last summer after his firm, Williams & Jensen, revealed he had lobbied the agency on a required federal disclosure form.
Eventually Pruitt’s departure from the EPA followed a series of damaging revelations involving pricey trips with first-class airline seats and unusual security spending, including a $43,000 soundproof booth for making private phone calls. He also demanded 24-hour-a-day protection from armed officers, resulting in a swollen 20-member security detail that blew through overtime budgets and racked up expenses of more than $3 million.
The EPA chief allegedly also ordered his staff to do personal chores for him, picking up dry cleaning and trying to obtain a used Trump hotel mattress for his apartment. He had also enlisted his staff to contact conservative groups and companies to find a lucrative job for his unemployed wife, including emails seeking a Chick-fil-A franchise from a senior executive at the fast-food chain.
In one head-scratching fool hardy comedy of denials and embarrassing on-air obfuscation fest, Pruitt publicly denied any knowledge of massive raises awarded to two close aides he had brought with him to EPA from Oklahoma. Documents later showed Pruitt’s chief of staff had signed off on the pay hikes, indicating he had the administrator’s consent.
“Mr. Pruitt’s brazen abuse of his position for his own personal gain has been absolutely astounding, rivaled only by the silence of far too many in Congress and in the White House who allowed Mr. Pruitt’s unethical, and, at times, possibly illegal behavior to go unchecked,” said Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware.
“History will not look kindly on this era: neither on Mr. Pruitt’s entirely irresponsible tenure nor on Congress’ abdication of its constitutional responsibilities all in order to protect political allies.”
Curiously, despite boasts of slashing red tape and promoting job creation, Pruitt had a mixed record of producing real-world results. Many of the EPA regulations Pruitt scraped or delayed had not yet taken effect, and the tens of thousands of lost coal mining He is the latest ranking Trump administration staffer to lose his job over ethics violations. Others include Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was fired in March amid questionable travel charges, as was the case of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The HHS secretary was fired last year after it was disclosed he took costly charter flights instead of commercial planes.