Scott Pruitt will no longer lead the Environmental Protection Agency, President Trump announced Thursday afternoon via Twitter.
Pruitt was among the most controversial of President Trump's original Cabinet-level picks. He embodied the administration's broad support for the fossil fuel industry and its disdain for climate science, and attracted the attention of Congress and the EPA's inspector general for a wide range of potential ethics violations that hinged on misusing his power and spending far more taxpayer money than his predecessors had on travel and security expenses.
As investigations piled up, multiple close aides and EPA staffers resigned from the agency, and support among congressional Republicans slowly weakened.
Pruitt came to the EPA from Oklahoma, where he spent years as the state's attorney general attacking the federal agency he would eventually run. With other Republican attorneys general, he sued the EPA to stop ozone and methane emissions rules and block regulations on coal-fired power plants. Throughout his career, he has publicly questioned climate change and whether it is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Until a replacement for Pruitt is named, the EPA will be led by Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist and senior Senate staffer.
While Pruitt's environmental policies were controversial, it was his spending and attempts to use the position for personal gain that resulted in more than a dozen investigations.
Several patterns were quickly established, including unusually high spending on his office and travel and continually mixing his personal and professional lives.
The EPA spent about $43,000 on a soundproof phone booth for the administrator's office, and The Washington Post reported that Pruitt spent thousands of dollars on first-class plane tickets. The New York Times reported Pruitt's chief of security proposed that Pruitt spend $70,000 on two desks, one of them bulletproof. The desks were not purchased.
Pruitt cited security threats as one reason for the first-class travel, and he spent tens of thousands of dollars on a publicly-funded, 24-hour security detail, which his office said was necessary to protect him from threats. Pruitt's security detail reportedly accompanied him on personal trips, including a family vacation to Disneyland. In August 2017, the EPA's Office of the Inspector General began investigating Pruitt's travel and security expenses and has widened the investigation multiple times.
Pruitt aides also sought to protect their boss from questions, and help his wife pursue business deals, according to New York Times and Washington Post analyses of thousands of internal emails released to the Sierra Club under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to CNN, Pruitt broke with a tradition set by past EPA administrators and kept a secret, non-public calendar to hide meetings with industry representatives and controversial figures. At public appearances, EPA staff often told reporters and citizens that the administrator would only answer pre-planned questions, the Times reported.