Scott Pruitt Resigns As EPA Administrator

Scott Pruitt, the scandal-ridden administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency who was accused of numerous ethical violations, has resigned. President Trump said on Twitter Thursday that he has accepted Pruitt's resignation.

"Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this," Trump wrote, adding that Andrew Wheeler, the deputy EPA administrator will assume duties as acting EPA administrator on Monday.

With Pruitt's departure, Trump loses an administrator many conservatives regarded as one of the more effective members of his Cabinet. But Pruitt had also been dogged for months by a seemingly unending string of ethics scandals that spawned more than a dozen federal and congressional investigations.

Pruitt was accused of a wide range of abuses while he served as EPA administrator. According to a list compiled by CNN, those abuses included high-price travel, using his aides for personal tasks, having close relationships with lobbyists and spending exorbitant amounts of money on things like fountain pens and a soundproof booth for his office that cost $43,000. Pruitt was also accused of using more than one email account and of directing the agency to delay or prevent public records requests, according to CNN's list.

Some of the more bizarre abuses Pruitt was accused of included having an aide email the CEO of Chick-fil-A asking about his wife becoming a franchise owner, trying to purchase a used mattress from the Trump hotel in Washington D.C. and paying $50 a night for a townhouse rental in a prime D.C. location that was linked to a lobbyist. He also demanded 24-hour-a-day protection from armed officers, resulting in a swollen 20-member security detail that blew through overtime budgets and racked up expenses of more than $3 million.

Like Trump, Pruitt voiced skepticism about mainstream climate science and was a fierce critic of the Paris climate agreement. The president cheered his EPA chief's moves to boost fossil fuel production and roll back regulations opposed by corporate interests.

But despite boasts of slashing red tape and promoting job creation, Pruitt had a mixed record of producing real-world results. Many of the EPA regulations Pruitt scraped or delayed had not yet taken effect, and the tens of thousands of lost coal mining jobs the president pledged to bring back never materialized.

Lawmakers reacting to the news of Pruitt's resignation said it was about time the administrator stepped down.

Reporting from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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