Current Events > Scott Pruitt tried to use his power to get his wife a Chick-Fil-A restaurant

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://wapo.st/2sFzlNm

Three months after Scott Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, his executive scheduler emailed Dan Cathy, chairman and president of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, with an unusual request: Would Cathy meet with Pruitt to discuss a potential business opportunity?

A call was arranged, then canceled, and Pruitt eventually spoke with someone from the companys legal department. Only then did he reveal the opportunity on his mind was a job for his wife, Marlyn.

The subject of that phone call was an expression of interest in his wife becoming a Chick-fil-A franchisee, company representative Carrie Kurlander told The Washington Post via email.

Marlyn Pruitt never opened a restaurant. Administrator Pruitts wife started, but did not complete, the Chick-fil-A franchisee application, Kurlander said. But the revelation that Pruitt used his official position and EPA staff to try to line up work for his wife appears to open a new chapter in the ongoing saga of his questionable spending and management decisions, which so far have spawned a dozen federal probes.

Pruitts efforts on his wifes behalf revealed in emails recently released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club did not end with Chick-fil-A. Pruitt also approached the chief executive of Concordia, a New York nonprofit organization. The executive, Matthew Swift, said he ultimately paid Marlyn Pruitt $2,000 plus travel expenses to help organize the groups annual conference last September.

Multiple current and former EPA aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said Pruitt told them he was eager for his wife to start receiving a salary. Two said Pruitt was frustrated in part by the high cost of maintaining homes in both Washington and Oklahoma.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox declined to comment on Pruitts overtures on his wifes behalf to Concordia and Chick-fil-A.

Federal ethics laws bar public officials from using their position or staff for private gain. A Cabinet-level official using his perch to contact a company CEO about a job for his wife raises the specter of misuse of public office, said Don Fox, who was head of the federal Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration. Its not much different [from] if he [had] asked the aide to facilitate getting a franchise for himself.

Asking a government scheduler, Sydney Hupp, to plan the meeting also marks a violation of federal rules barring officials from asking subordinates to perform personal tasks, Fox said. It is a misuse of the aides time to ask the aide to do something like this that is really for personal financial benefit.

Hupp left the EPA last year; she did not respond to a request for comment.

Hupp was not the only EPA employee enlisted to perform nonofficial tasks. Last month, Pruitt acknowledged Hupps sister, Millan, helped him search for housing in the District. She later told congressional staffers she made inquiries at the Trump International Hotel about buying him a used mattress while she was on the EPA payroll.
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Pruitts expression of interest began on May 16, 2017, according to the emails released under FOIA, when Hupp emailed Cathy that her boss asked me to reach out to you and see if you might be willing to get a time set up for the two of you to have a meeting.

Cathy, who has championed socially conservative causes and had met Pruitt during his tenure as Oklahoma attorney general, replied within an hour, connecting Hupp with one of his own aides, Evan Karanovich.

Karanovich asked whether an initial phone call would be sufficient and asked what the EPA chief wanted to talk about. The Administrator did not mention a specific topic, but I will touch base with him to see if there is one, Hupp replied.

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the best people
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Let's wait for all the facts first.
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still couldn't even get her a job
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Well he has my vote.

ew, chick-fil-a
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I kinda feel like he's the worst member or the administration, but it's hard to be sure.
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Why the fuck are some of these people still in office

@Caution999

On a scale of 1 to 100 just how corrupt is this administration?
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FursonaNonGrata posted...

Why the fuck are some of these people still in office

As long as they don't cross Trump, why should he care?
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okies gonna okie
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https://twitter.com/JessicaASmith8/status/1004421219888848897
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shockthemonkey posted...

Its amazing how openly corrupt Pruitt is, even by Trump Administration standards.

sad!
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/top-aide-to-epa-administrator-scott-pruitt-resigns/561974/

A top aide for Scott Pruitt, Millan Hupp, resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a source briefed on the matter and documents reviewed by The Atlantic. Her last day will be Friday.

Hupp, who worked as director of scheduling and advance, has been entangled in many of the scandals dogging EPA Administrator Pruitt. In March, she was one of two aides who received hefty salary bumps, even after the White House refused Pruitts request for the raises. And as The Washington Post reported on Monday, she recently testified to the House Oversight Committee that she regularly spent her days doing personal tasks for Pruitt, from hunting for housing to calling the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., to inquire about purchasing a used mattress.

According to one top EPA official, the 26-year-old was tired of being thrown under the bus by Pruitt, and weary of seeing her name constantly appear in headlines about the agency. Officials began drafting her resignation paperwork on Monday morning, just after portions of her congressional testimony were made public.

Hupps testimony contributed to the long list of scandals and improprieties plaguing the agencyincluding, most notably, that Pruitt rented a Capitol Hill condo from an energy lobbyist for just $50 a month, and spent more than $40,000 on a soundproof booth in his office on the taxpayers dime. For months now, according to multiple White House and EPA sources, officials as senior as Chief of Staff John Kelly have lobbied President Trump to fire Pruitt.

Rumors circulated that Trump was simply waiting for Pruitts deputy, Andrew Wheeler, to be confirmed before letting Pruitt go. But that was two months ago. Since then, according to reports, Trump has been increasingly irritated by the barrage of stories that reflect poorly on his administration, including The Atlantics reporting on a Pruitt aide who tried shopping negative stories about Interior secretary Ryan Zinke to other news outlets. Yet the EPA administrator appears to remain in good standing.

Pruitt has lost a valuable ally in Hupp, however. Hupp was part of a small cadre of aides who worked for Pruitt in Oklahoma before joining him in Washington. She served on Pruitts political team during his time as the states attorney general. Her closeness with Pruitt was often a point of contention among officials, with many staffers grumbling that Hupp and others in the Oklahoma posse, as they were dubbed, received special treatment, as the raises in March seemed to imply.

EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox, reached by phone, would not comment. He said: You have a great day, youre a piece of trash.

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Just a magnicficent shithead

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/06/pruitt-white-house-lunch-603350
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God, he's so terrible
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He was put there to gut the EPA and destroy it beyond repair, as long as he does that Trump doesn't care. Same with Carson and Devos, All of them were and more were put into departments to destroy them and they're doing amazing jobs at that, it's going to take decades to fix Trump's mess especially with Republicans fighting the country tooth and nail every step of the way.
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Look at this shit!
https://wapo.st/2xOfUYE

While EPA security agents are required to protect Pruitt at all times while he is working and during his off hours the two individuals said the administrator had asked members of the detail to perform tasks that go beyond their primary function. In one instance, they said, he directed agents to drive him to multiple locations in search of a particular lotion on offer at Ritz-Carlton hotels.

One other occasions, they added, he asked agents to pick up his dry cleaning without him.

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DarkChozoGhost posted...

God, he's so terrible

this is Donald J Trump "draining the swamp", for all you anti-government types who continue to insist that Donnie is an "outsider" who will fix the corruption in Washington LMAO
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Tbh I admire his commitment to dumb lazy petty grifts. Like, any amateur can make an aide carry out personal tasks for you. A true professional makes up death threats so that you get issued a larger security detail so you can then make them do personal tasks.
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