EPA staff in 'despair' after Pruitt blame game

Even political aides are tired of the chief 'constantly putting himself first,' one former agency official said.

By EMILY HOLDEN 04/27/2018 05:33 PM EDT

Scott Pruitt may have survived his testimony on Capitol Hill, but he's coming back to a further enraged and demoralized Environmental Protection Agency staff.

Several current and former EPA officials and other people close to the agency said Pruitt did himself no favors with his congressional testimony Thursday, in which he blamed his aides for installing a $43,000 privacy booth in his office and approving more than $100,000 in first-class flights that he took last year. Pruitt also denied knowing key details about raises that his top staff received last year. And he declined to defend his former policy chief against Democrats' accusations that she had failed to show up for work for three months, even though she and Pruitt had been photographed attending the same meeting during the period in question.

In conversations with 11 people who know the atmosphere inside EPA, including Republican political appointees, a handful said his refusal to grovel may have pleased President Donald Trump. But others said his strategy was appalling to the current and former staffers who found themselves thrown under the bus.

"I think his credibility is damaged, and whether or not he gets fired by a tweet isn't going to diminish the fact that his credibility has been seriously damaged by all of this," one person close to the administration told POLITICO. "It shows a real lack of leadership that he did not defend, or blamed, his staff. These are the people that he's asking for loyalty from. These are the people that are defending him. He's not returning the favor. That's not leadership." A current EPA official said Friday that employees are veering between "despair" and "embarrassment," and Pruitt's televised performance did not help.

"I will tell you, it did not go unnoticed from people who watched the hearing that he did not take responsibility on the policy pieces” of the testimony, the official said. "It was not lost on us on the stuff we know about that he used very careful language, he was parsing his words, that some might say he did not speak the whole truth."

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/27/pruitt-epa-strategy-staff-despair-507221