Overnight Energy: EPA watchdog won’t drop Pruitt probes | Exxon leaves conservative advocacy group | Lawmakers offer changes to Endangered Species Act

2018年7月12日星期四

Overnight Energy: EPA watchdog won’t drop Pruitt probes | Exxon leaves conservative advocacy group | Lawmakers offer changes to Endangered Species Act

EPA WATCHDOG TO CONTINUE PRUITT PROBES: The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) internal watchdog said Thursday it will carry on with at least five of its ongoing probes involving former Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Kentia Elbaum, a spokeswoman for the EPA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG), said Thursday that five closely watched probes that the office has publicly announced involving Pruitt and his close aides will carry on despite Pruitt's resignation last week. The list appears to include all of the known ongoing audits.

As for any ongoing criminal investigations involving Pruitt, the OIG doesn't disclose those, so it refused to say if any would continue. But Elbaum said any such probes involving Pruitt will continue as well.

"We can say that any criminal investigations that may have existed at the time of Mr. Pruitt's resignation will continue," Elbaum said in a statement.

Pruitt left amid more than a dozen investigations by various federal bodies, including the EPA inspector general.

The OIG probes are looking into Pruitt's lavish first-class travel, potentially inappropriate raises given to staff, more than $3.5 million in security costs, employees that may have been overpaid and whether Pruitt's office properly preserved email and text messages.

Investigators are also continuing to compile a "factual" account of a speech Pruitt gave last year at a National Mining Association event. Lawmakers sought the probe after Politico reported that Pruitt asked the group to push President Trump to pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

The office told lawmakers that it is looking into whether Pruitt improperly used his aides for personal tasks like apartment hunting and finding a lotion he likes, although officials have not publicly confirmed the probe.

Why it matters: To Democrats, environmentalists and even some of Pruitt's allies, closing out the investigations is important to ensure trust in federal institutions and to confirm or refute the allegations.

But since Pruitt's no longer in government, he can't be subject to any administrative punishment, unless it's a criminal charge. Nonetheless, the facts of the cases could dog him in potential future endeavors.

Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) introduced an appropriations amendment this week that would block the EPA from implementing any regulations Pruitt helped to write until the OIG probes are complete.