Grijalva on Scott Pruitt Nomination to EPA: “He Bragged About Suing, Trashing and Manipulating the Agency He’s Supposed to Lead”

Washington, D.C. – Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) today rejected the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pruitt’s misleading rhetoric and lack of transparency in dealings with the EPA, whose Clean Power Plan he sued to block, has been covered by the New York Times and many other outlets.

As the Times reported in December 2014, Pruitt once passed off a letter written by lawyers for Devon Energy, a large oil and gas company, rejecting the science behind air pollution controls as his own work. He subsequently fought the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan without acknowledging his deep connections to oil and other heavily polluting industries.

“Mr. Pruitt, like Mr. Trump, laughs at the public even as he calls himself a servant of working families,” said Grijalva, who is also co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “He uses his office to help polluters at public expense and then denies it. He’s bragged about suing, trashing and manipulating the agency he’s now supposed to lead. The minority of Americans who voted for the President-elect did not give him a mandate to turn our environment over to polluters and their allies like Mr. Pruitt.”

Grijalva highlighted the fact that on Pruitt’s watch, Oklahoma’s environment has become known chiefly for an astonishing number of human-caused earthquakes, including the largest in human history, because of fracking and associated waste disposal operations statewide. State officials have been slow to oversee or regulate the practice despite the risks to property, human safety and the national economy.

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