The Washington Post: Opinion: President Trump Has a Scott Pruitt Problem. Enter Mick Mulvaney.
Last week, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, seemed to awaken from his stupor and begin serious investigation into the reported financial abuses, retaliation and excessive staff raises at the Environmental Protection Agency. Administrator Scott Pruitt is in hot water for everything from a $43,000 soundproof booth to a rental agreement with a lobbyist’s wife. After Democrats dropped a critical whistleblower witness into its lap, the GOP majority demanded a raft of documents and interviews with a long list of EPA officials. Gowdy also sent a letter complaining about Pruitt’s nonresponsiveness to a previous request dating back to February 20.
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Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, told me, “It’s hard to know for certain exactly what precipitated OMB’s involvement, but one possibility is that the White House is sending Pruitt a message that the end is near.” He explained, “OMB’s publicly announcing its review of EPA would seem to support that hypothesis because OMB usually works quietly behind the scenes. I have trouble imagining a scenario in which Pruitt keeps his job, with concurrent inquiries by the inspector general, the House, the Senate, and now OMB.”