Scott Pruitt

Edward Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968) is an American attorney, lobbyist and Republican politician from the state of Oklahoma.

Pruitt was born in 1968 in Danville, Kentucky, the eldest of three siblings, and moved to Lexington as a boy.

There, his father, Edward, owned steak houses and his mother, Linda Pruitt Warner, was a homemaker.

He was a football and baseball player at Lafayette High School, earning a baseball scholarship to the University of Kentucky, where he played second base.

After a year, he transferred to Georgetown College in Kentucky and graduated in 1990 with bachelor's degrees in political science and communications.

He then moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he attended the University of Tulsa College of Law and earned a Juris Doctor in 1993.

After law school Pruitt started a solo legal practice in Tulsa that he named "Christian Legal Services," which focused on defending Christians in religious liberty cases.

Pruitt worked as a lawyer for five years before running for state senate.

Pruitt represented Tulsa and Wagoner counties in the Oklahoma Senate from 1998 until 2006.

Pruitt was elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 1998, representing Tulsa and Wagoner counties.

In 1999 and again in 2005, Pruitt introduced legislation to establish fathers' "property rights" over unborn fetuses, which meant that a pregnant woman would be required to get the consent of the father prior to an abortion.

After two years in the Senate, Pruitt was selected to serve as the Republican whip from 2001 to 2003.

In 2001, while a freshman state legislator, Pruitt sought his party's nomination to succeed Steve Largent as the representative for Oklahoma's 1st congressional district but was unsuccessful.

In 2003, after his unsuccessful congressional campaign, Pruitt bought a share in a Triple-A baseball team, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, partnering with major Republican donor Robert A. Funk (reportedly for $11.5 million).

Pruitt, whose annual salary as a state senator was $38,400, financed his part of the purchase with a loan from SpiritBank.

In October 2003, while a state senator, Pruitt purchased a home in Oklahoma City through a shell company, Capitol House L.L.C., in which six partners held equal shares.

The buyers included lobbyist Justin Whitefield, healthcare executive Jon Jiles, Robert Funk (who was Pruitt's PAC chairman), and attorney Ken Wagner.

The home was purchased at about a $100,000 discount from its purchase price of a year earlier and included its furnishings.

The seller was Marsha Lindsey, a lobbyist who advocated on behalf of a telecommunications company.

Lindsey's loss was partly offset by her employer's retirement package.

He was then selected to serve as the Republican Assistant Floor Leader, a position he held until he left the Senate in 2006.

During that time he also sat as the chair of a task force for the American Legislative Exchange Council.

There, he worked to put limits on workers' compensation and sponsored a reform bill that sought to impose drug tests on workers who were involved in job injuries or accidents.

In 2010, Pruitt was elected Attorney General of Oklahoma.

In that role, he opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act, and environmental regulations as a self-described "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda."

He sued the EPA at least 14 times in the role.

He received major corporate and employee campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, taking in at least $215,574 between 2010 and 2014 even though he ran unopposed in the latter year.

In 2010, they sold the team for an undisclosed profit.

Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association in 2012 and was re-elected for a second term in February 2013.

Pruitt was nominated to lead the EPA by President Donald Trump after the 2016 election, and was confirmed by the United States Senate in February 2017 in a 52–46 vote.

He served as the 14th Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from February 17, 2017, to July 9, 2018, during the Donald Trump presidency, resigning while under at least 14 federal investigations.

Pruitt denies the scientific consensus on climate change.

By July 2018, Pruitt was under at least 14 separate federal investigations by the Government Accountability Office, the EPA inspector general, the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, and two House committees over his spending habits, conflicts of interest, extreme secrecy, and management practices.

Pruitt made frequent use of first-class travel as well as frequent charter and military flights.

He leased a condo in Washington, D.C., at a deeply discounted rate from a lobbyist whose clients were regulated by the EPA.

Pruitt further caused ethics concerns by circumventing the White House and using a narrow provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to autonomously give raises to his two closest aides of approximately $28,000 and $57,000 each, which were substantially higher than salaries paid to those in similar positions in the Obama administration, and which allowed both to avoid signing conflicts of interest pledges.

Some conservatives joined a growing chorus suggesting that Pruitt should resign.

On July 5, 2018, Pruitt announced he would resign from office on July 9, leaving Andrew R. Wheeler as the acting head of the agency.

In April 2022, Pruitt filed to run for the United States Senate to represent Oklahoma in that state's special election to replace Senator Jim Inhofe, who retired.

He lost in the Republican primary, garnering 5% of the vote.