Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968) is an American attorney, lobbyist and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma. He served as the 14th Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from February 17, 2017, to July 9, 2018, during the Donald Trump presidency, resigning while under at least 14 federal investigations. Pruitt denies the scientific consensus on climate change.
Pruitt represented Tulsa and Wagoner counties in the Oklahoma Senate from 1998 until 2006. In 2010, Pruitt was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma. In that role, he opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations as a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." He sued the EPA at least 14 times in the role. Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association in 2012 and was re-elected for a second term in February 2013. He received major corporate and employee campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, taking in at least $215,574 between 2010 and 2014 despite running unopposed in the latter year.
Pruitt was nominated to lead the EPA by President Donald Trump after the 2016 election, and was confirmed by the United States Senate in February 2017 in a 52–46 vote. By July 2018, Pruitt was under at least 14 separate federal investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the EPA inspector general, the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and two House committees over his spending habits, conflicts of interest, extreme secrecy, and management practices. Pruitt made frequent use of first-class travel as well as frequent charter and military flights. He leased a condo in Washington, D.C., at a deeply discounted rate from a lobbyist whose clients were regulated by the EPA. Pruitt further caused ethics concerns by circumventing the White House and using a narrow provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to autonomously give raises to his two closest aides of approximately $28,000 and $57,000 each, which were substantially higher than salaries paid to those in similar positions in the Obama administration, and which allowed both to avoid signing conflicts of interest pledges. Some conservatives joined a growing chorus suggesting that Pruitt should resign. On July 5, 2018, Pruitt announced he would resign from office on July 9, leaving Andrew R. Wheeler as the acting head of the agency.
In April 2022, Pruitt filed to run for the United States Senate to represent Oklahoma in that state's special election to replace Senator Jim Inhofe, who retired. He lost in the Republican primary, garnering 5% of the vote.
Early life Pruitt was born in 1968 in Danville, Kentucky, the eldest of three siblings, and moved to Lexington as a boy. There, his father, Edward, owned steak houses and his mother, Linda Pruitt Warner, was a homemaker. He was a football and baseball player at Lafayette High School, earning a baseball scholarship to the University of Kentucky, where he played second base. After a year, he transferred to Georgetown College in Kentucky and graduated in 1990 with bachelor's degrees in political science and communications. He then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended the University of Tulsa College of Law and earned a Juris Doctor in 1993.
Legal experience After law school Pruitt started a solo legal practice in Tulsa that he named "Christian Legal Services," which focused on defending Christians in religious liberty cases. Pruitt worked as a lawyer for five years before running for state senate.
Early career
Pruitt was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1998, representing Tulsa and Wagoner counties. In 1999 and again in 2005, Pruitt introduced legislation to establish fathers' "property rights" over unborn fetuses, which meant that a pregnant woman would be required to get the consent of the father prior to an abortion. After two years in the Senate, Pruitt was selected to serve as the Republican whip from 2001 to 2003. He was then selected to serve as the Republican Assistant Floor Leader, a position he held until he left the Senate in 2006. During that time he also sat as the chair of a task force for the American Legislative Exchange Council. There, he worked to put limits on workers' compensation and sponsored a reform bill that sought to impose drug tests on workers who were involved in job injuries or accidents.
In 2001, while a freshman state legislator, Pruitt sought his party's nomination to succeed Steve Largent as the representative for Oklahoma's 1st congressional district but was unsuccessful. In 2003, after his unsuccessful congressional campaign, Pruitt bought a share in a Triple-A baseball team, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, partnering with major Republican donor Robert A. Funk (reportedly for $11.5 million). Pruitt, whose annual salary as a state senator was $38,400, financed his part of the purchase with a loan from SpiritBank. In 2010, they sold the team for an undisclosed profit.
In October 2003, while a state senator, Pruitt purchased a home in Oklahoma City through a shell company, Capitol House L.L.C., in which six partners held equal shares. The buyers included lobbyist Justin Whitefield, healthcare executive Jon Jiles, Robert Funk (who was Pruitt's PAC chairman), and attorney Kenneth Wagner. The home was purchased at about a $100,000 discount from its purchase price of a year earlier and included its furnishings. The seller was Marsha Lindsey, a lobbyist who advocated on behalf of a telecommunications company. Lindsey's loss was partly offset by her employer's retirement package. Pruitt and Whitefield both lived at the home while on business in the state capital. At the time, Whitefield was a registered lobbyist for industry-aligned groups that sought legislative changes to Oklahoma's workers' compensation laws; Pruitt was the major legislative supporter of these efforts. The home was sold by the L.L.C. in 2005, for $470,000. Pruitt failed to publicly disclose his financial relationships with Whitefield and the others, which were revealed by the press in 2018.Steve Eder & Hiroko Tabuchi Pruitt's Coziness With Lobbyists Includes Secretly Buying a House With One, New York Times (May 3, 2018). In 2017, Wagner was hired by Pruitt as the EPA's state and regional affairs adviser.Pruitt's friend joins agency as senior adviser, E&E News, Kevin Bogardus and Mike Soraghan, April 13, 2017. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
Oklahoma Attorney General
In 2006 Pruitt sought the Republican nomination to replace outgoing Republican Mary Fallin as Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma. He was unsuccessful; Fallin later won the gubernatorial election. In 2010, Pruitt again ran for the position of Attorney General of Oklahoma. He won the Republican primary on July 27, 2010, with 56.05% of the vote, defeating Ryan Leonard. Pruitt went on to defeat the Democratic nominee, Oklahoma City defense attorney Jim Priest, in the November 2, 2010, general election with 65.11% of the vote. In 2014 Pruitt ran unopposed in both the primary and general elections.
Tenure After winning election in 2010, Pruitt dissolved the Environmental Protection Unit in the Attorney General's office. He stated a desire to increase operational efficiency and shifted the attorneys responsible for environmental protection to the Attorney General's Public Protection Unit and the Solicitor General's Unit. Pruitt stated that "the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality – not the Office of Attorney General – has primary responsibility for implementing and enforcing environmental laws in Oklahoma".
Pruitt instead created a "Federalism Unit" in the Attorney General's office dedicated to fighting President Barack Obama's regulatory agenda and suing the administration over its immigration policy, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Pruitt was successful in raising campaign contributions from the energy industry, helping him to become chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. The oil and gas industry contributed over $300,000 to Pruitt's campaigns over the years.
In 2012, Pruitt kept Oklahoma out of the mortgage settlement reached by 49 other states with five national lenders (Ally Financial/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo), with Pruitt citing differing philosophies of government.
In 2013, Pruitt brought a lawsuit targeting the Affordable Care Act, Oklahoma ex rel. E. Scott Pruitt v. Burwell, alleging that federal cost-sharing subsidies were not authorized by the Act.Silas Allen, Scott Pruitt was first state AG to challenge Obamacare subsidies, Oklahoman (December 7, 2016). In King v. Burwell (2015), a decision addressing identical claims brought by other Republican attorneys general,Chris Casteel, U.S. Supreme Court won't add Oklahoma case to crucial Affordable Care Act review, Oklahoman (January 27, 2015).Lisa Schencker, Supreme Court rejects second insurance subsidy case, focus to remain on King v. Burwell, Modern Healthcare (January 26, 2015). the Supreme Court upheld the federal subsidies, holding that they were authorized under the Act.Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Allows Nationwide Health Care Subsidies, New York Times (June 25, 2015).
In 2013, Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, co-chaired Pruitt's reelection campaign. Pruitt ran unopposed in the 2014 primary election and won the November 2014 election for a new term as Attorney General. Pruitt then jointly filed a lawsuit against a federal regulation alongside the Oklahoma Gas & Electric and an energy industry group funded by Hamm.
Pruitt's office sued the EPA to block its Clean Power Plan and Waters of the United States rule. Pruitt also sued the EPA on behalf of Oklahoma utilities unwilling to take on the burdens of additional regulation of their coal-fired plants, and criticized the agency in a congressional hearing. As of June 2014, all of Pruitt's lawsuits against the EPA had failed. By January 2017, Pruitt had sued the EPA 13 times.
In 2013, Pruitt supported the Oklahoma legislature's bid to join four other states trying to restrict medical abortions by limiting or banning off-label uses of drugs, via House Bill 1970. After the state Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the abortion law was unconstitutional, Pruitt requested that the United States Supreme Court review the case. Pruitt was unhappy with the United States Supreme Court's rejection of the Oklahoma case.
In June 2013, Pruitt maintained that the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a provision of DOMA, a federal law that denied federal benefits to homosexual married couples did not affect Oklahoma's laws on the subject.
The Washington D.C. watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability sued Pruitt's successor as Oklahoma Attorney General for the failure of the office to release documentation that had been withheld from the public concerning corruption allegations involving the management of the Tar Creek Reclamation Superfund lead-contaminated waste site near Miami, Oklahoma. In 2014, Pruitt asked Oklahoma's State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones to audit the financial corruption by contractors performing the cleanup. Pruitt blocked Jones from following his intention to release the audit results.Watchdogs sue for Okla. audit Pruitt withheld, E&E News, Mike Soraghan, November 27, 2017. Retrieved November 28, 2017.