An email now suggests Scott Pruitt maybe did sign off on controversial pay raises for an aide he brought with him from Oklahoma when he took over the Environmental Protection Agency.
It’s what The Atlantic reported this week and the email is in direct contradiction to what Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General told Fox News when questioned about it last week.
The pay raise in question went to Sarah Greenwalt, who once worked in the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office before Pruitt took her to Washington D.C. when he took over at EPA. She received a reported pay raise of $56,765 even after the White House denied the jump in salary.
The Atlantic maintains that Greenwalt sent an email to HR at EPA confirming the pay raise and that Pruitt approved of it. As the news magazine reported, a second administration official confirmed the email.
But Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, who once was chief of staff for Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, a close friend of Pruitt, maintained Pruitt had no knowledge of the raise.
“Administrator Pruitt had zero knowledge of the amount of the raises, nor the process by which they transpired,” he said in a statement. “These kind of personnel actions are handled by myself, EPA’s HR officials and PPO. These kind of personnel actions are handled by EPA’s HR officials, PPO and me. Any communications claiming otherwise are simply inaccurate.”
The other employee who was also brought to Washington from Oklahoma, Millan Hupp received a $28,130 salary bump.
In last week’s interview with Fox News reporter Ed Henry, Pruitt was asked, ‘You didn’t know they got these pay raises?” Pruitt responded, “I didn’t know they got the pay raises until yesterday.”