Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is out here living his best life on the taxpayers’ dime. First there were charges that he and his wife were flying first class with a security detail and using military planes like his personal Uber.
In one month, Pruitt charged some $90,000 in first-class flights. Since that scandal, he’s sworn that he will only fly coach from now on. Then this fool got a $43,000 soundproof phone booth built in his EPA office, because ballers need privacy. Fine, whatever.
This should have been the end of Pruitt’s merciless scammery, but because the EPA chief is out here living his best Tyrone Hankerson Jr. lifestyle, Pruitt reportedly rented a condo in Capitol Hill, one of Washington, D.C.’s most posh neighborhoods, for $50 a night.
Oh, and get this: The landlord of said sweetheart rental deal is the wife of a top energy lobbyist! And Pruitt didn’t have to pay for the days he didn’t stay in the condo, and it was kept vacant until he wanted to use it again. The EPA, which Pruitt runs, found nothing wrong with the deal.
Now it’s looking like Pruitt worked a scammy loophole to give two longtime aides fat raises after that was denied by the White House.
“Pruitt sought permission from the White House in March to increase the pay of Sarah Greenwalt and Millan Hupp, who had been part of the team who traveled with him from Oklahoma, where he was attorney general, to Washington, D.C.,” ‘sThe Atlantic reports.
Pruitt wanted to raise pay for Greenwalt, his senior counsel at the EPA, from $107,435 to $164,200. For Hupp, who had worked on his political team and then as his scheduling director at the EPA, he sought a salary increase from $86,460 to $114,590, the report said.
Pruitt reportedly sought approval for the massive pay hikes through the Presidential Personnel Office, which promptly shot them down. But like anyone familiar with the Scamster Guide to Scamtasticness, Pruitt wasn’t going to let a little “no” keep him down. Pruitt found a loophole in the Safe Drinking Water Act that allows him to hire people without White House approval and back-ended Greenwalt’s and Hupp’s raises that way.
The EPA didn’t return The Atlantic’s request for comment. Calls placed to Joanne the Scammer’s burner phone were not immediately returned, but something tells me she would be proud of Pruitt’s work.