After months of unceasing scandal, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, before Tuesday, could have been fairly described as the worst, most corrupt member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Now he can claim a new title: most thuggish member of Trump’s cabinet.
The EPA banned reporters from AP, CNN, and environmental-focused news organization E&E from attending a national summit on harmful water contaminants on Tuesday, violently ejecting a reporter from the Associated Press.
From the AP report:
Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.
It’s unclear at this time why Pruitt’s government-sponsored goons went after these specific news organizations, but it might have something to do with their coverage of his bald-faced public corruption and his near-daily assaults on the environmental safety he was sworn to protect.
Because lists of Pruitt’s ongoing corruption scandals have been done to death, here is a list of Pruitt lists published by the organizations that were banned on Tuesday:
• Last month, CNN published a story listing 14 specific “controversies and allegations” about Pruitt’s tenure in office.
• Last month, the AP published a story describing and listing Pruitt’s responses to congressional investigators’ questions about his various scandals.
• Last November, E&E News uncovered and published a list of how Pruitt was remaking the Scientific Advisory Board in his industry-friendly, Earth-antagonistic image.
In its reporting on the water contaminants summit that it was barred from, the AP noted that “Pruitt has faced criticism in recent weeks over emails showing the EPA sought to intervene in a critical study on the contaminants.”
Also on Monday, it was reported that Pruitt was planning to roll back Obama-era safeguards taken in the aftermath of a 2013 fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, that killed 15 people.
Update, 12:30 p.m.: Pruitt’s EPA reversed itself and let reporters into part of the forum.
