# Scott Pruitt Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968, Danville, Kentucky) served as [[EPA]] Administrator in the [[First Trump Administration]] from February 17, 2017 to July 9, 2018. A creature of the fossil fuel industry who sued the [[EPA]] fourteen times as Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt is the textbook case of [[Regulatory Capture]] — the man whose career was built on attacking the agency was handed the keys to run it. He resigned amid at least thirteen simultaneous federal ethics investigations, a record unmatched by any other [[Trump Administration]] official. ## Background and Early Career Pruitt grew up in Kentucky and attended the University of Tulsa for both his undergraduate degree and law school. He entered Oklahoma politics in the late 1990s, serving as a state senator from 1998 to 2006. His time in the legislature was unremarkable compared to what came next: in 2010 he ran for Attorney General on an explicitly anti-regulatory platform and won, taking office in January 2011. ## Oklahoma Attorney General: The Fossil Fuel AG (2011–2017) Pruitt's tenure as Oklahoma AG transformed the office into an extension of the fossil fuel industry's legal department. He sued the [[EPA]] fourteen times to block environmental regulations including the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States rule, methane emission standards, and updated ozone regulations. Every major Obama-era environmental rule drew a Pruitt lawsuit. The relationship went far deeper than philosophical alignment. A 2014 New York Times investigation revealed that Pruitt had sent letters to the [[EPA]] on official state letterhead that were literally ghostwritten by Devon Energy lobbyists — he simply signed his name to industry-drafted text and filed it as the official position of the state of Oklahoma. The letters attacked federal air pollution regulations that Devon Energy wanted weakened. The coordination between Pruitt's office and companies like Devon Energy and [[Continental Resources]] (run by [[Harold Hamm]], a major Republican donor) was systematic and ongoing. Pruitt was a founding member of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a [[Dark Money]] arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association funded by fossil fuel interests and the [[Koch Network]]. The group coordinated legal strategy across Republican AG offices to challenge environmental rules, effectively pooling the sovereign litigation power of multiple states and placing it at the service of oil and gas industry priorities. This pipeline — fossil fuel money flowing through [[Dark Money]] groups to elect and coordinate sympathetic state attorneys general — represents one of the most effective mechanisms of industry capture of public legal institutions. ## EPA Administrator: Regulatory Demolition (2017–2018) [[Donald Trump]] nominated Pruitt to lead the [[EPA]] in December 2016. The appointment was the purest expression of [[Regulatory Capture]] in modern American history: the agency's most aggressive legal adversary was now its administrator. The [[Heritage Foundation]] and the [[Koch Network]] had both lobbied for Pruitt's appointment as part of a broader strategy to dismantle the [[Administrative State]] from within. Pruitt moved immediately to roll back the Obama-era regulations he had spent years suing to block. His major actions included withdrawing the Clean Power Plan (the centerpiece Obama-era [[Climate Change]] regulation), rolling back methane emission rules for oil and gas operations, weakening fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, proposing repeal of the Waters of the United States rule, and restricting which scientific studies the [[EPA]] could use in rulemaking through the so-called "secret science" rule, which required that all underlying data be publicly available — a standard that would effectively disqualify most epidemiological and public health research. Pruitt installed former industry lobbyists throughout [[EPA]] leadership, embedding fossil fuel interests directly into the agency's decision-making apparatus. Under his watch, [[EPA]] enforcement actions fell to their lowest levels in decades. The combination of legal rollbacks, personnel capture, and enforcement stand-downs amounted to a systematic [[Deregulation]] campaign that went far beyond any single rule change. ## Ethics Scandals and Resignation While the regulatory demolition proceeded on schedule, Pruitt's personal conduct generated an extraordinary cascade of ethics scandals that ultimately forced his resignation: He spent $43,000 in taxpayer money to install a soundproof phone booth in his office. He maintained a twenty-person round-the-clock security detail costing $3.5 million — unprecedented for an [[EPA]] administrator. He rented a Capitol Hill condominium for $50 per night (well below market rate) from the wife of an energy industry lobbyist whose firm had business before the [[EPA]]. He ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in first-class travel expenses. The pettier abuses were almost more revealing than the large-dollar ones. Pruitt used government staff to search for a Chick-fil-A franchise opportunity for his wife. He directed [[EPA]] employees to try to secure his wife a job at the Republican Attorneys General Association — the same organization whose [[Dark Money]] arm had supported his own career. He had [[EPA]] staff attempt to acquire a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel. By the time he resigned on July 5, 2018, at least thirteen federal investigations were open into his conduct. His replacement was [[Andrew Wheeler]], a former coal industry lobbyist — confirming that the fossil fuel capture of the [[EPA]] was not a bug of the Pruitt appointment but a feature of the administration's environmental strategy. ## Significance in the Right Wing KB Pruitt's arc from industry-funded attorney general to industry-serving agency head to ethics-scandal resignation encapsulates several interlocking systems tracked across this vault. He is the definitive case study for [[Regulatory Capture]]: not the revolving-door variety where officials move between government and industry over a career, but the hostile-takeover variety where an agency's declared enemy is installed as its leader. The Devon Energy ghostwritten letters are a smoking-gun exhibit for how fossil fuel companies capture state attorneys general through the [[Dark Money]] pipeline. His replacement by [[Andrew Wheeler]] — a former coal lobbyist — demonstrates that the capture was systematic rather than incidental. And the constellation of [[Dark Money]] groups, [[Koch Network]] organizations, and industry donors that elevated Pruitt traces the infrastructure connecting fossil fuel money to regulatory outcomes at both the state and federal level.