Scott Pruitt Reportedly Wants to Go Back to What He Does Best, Destroying the Environment
It is my sad duty to inform you that irony is dead and we are left to live out the rest of our lives in its sad, pathetic ashes, because former Environmental Protection Agency Head and chief Trump administration grifter Scott Pruitt is reportedly in talks to take on a new job “consulting” for one of the largest coal companies in America.
Citing a pair of coal industry officials, the New York Times reported on Wednesday that Pruitt “laid out his plans to develop a new consulting firm in one-on-one discussions with several executives during a Kentucky Coal Association meeting last week.” His position would reportedly involve working directly with coal baron Joseph W. Craft III—a major donor to President Donald Trump who notably let Pruitt use his personal arena seats during a University of Kentucky basketball game this past December.
Making things even fishier is the fact that Pruitt is technically banned from official lobbying work following his stint in the Trump administration, as part of a federal ethics pledge he signed in January, which barred him from “[engaging] in lobbying activities with respect to that agency” he formerly ran. The pledge, however, says nothing about being a private consultant. How convenient!
Speaking with the Times, one of the industry officials who discussed Pruitt’s potential career change insisted that the former EPA head would “not do anything inconsistent with his legal and ethical requirements.”
This is a laughable assertion, considering Pruitt’s tenure as the government’s chief environmentalist was marked by two things: Multiple corruption scandals, and an almost gleeful willingness to totally fuck over the environment, including declaring that “the war on coal is over” to a room full of—yup, you guessed it—Kentucky coal miners.