Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe has not only walked back last week’s doubts about his longtime friend and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, but he took a colleague as well as the New York Times to task accusing them of spreading outrageous lies about Pruitt.
He started Wednesday by going after Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware and the New York Times during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing. He said allegations made by Carper and the newspaper were “outrageous” and labeled them “lies.”
Inhofe ran down a list of claims against Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General and denied each, saying some stories were published without getting a response from Pruitt.
“Only in Washington can you make allegations and not get a response from the target,” said the Senator. He said stories about Pruitt taking basketball game tickets from the University of Kentucky were untrue and that Pruitt had paid for the tickets.
Inhofe told Bloomberg News he was “a little embarrassed” for his comments last week on the Laura Ingraham radio show where he said Pruitt might need to resign over growing ethics complaints.
“I was beginning to have doubts about Scott Pruitt, all these accusations, but I had to find out for myself,” he said on Wednesday following a meeting he had with Pruitt Tuesday night.
While he went after the New York Times in the Senate hearing, during the interview he blamed news media outlets but didn’t name them. He alleged Pruitt’s become a target of a campaign financed by billionaire political activist Tom Steyer.
A spokeswoman for NextGen America, the environmental group founded by Steyer said Pruitt’s a “national disgrace” and should resign.
Sen. Inhofe said Pruitt’s high security costs are justified because of the “unprecedented threats” against him and his family.
“I’m really harboring some guilty feelings because I was sucked into the same thing the public was,” Inhofe said.
Inhofe later told reporters that Pruitt “may have displayed poor judgment,” but said his lack of Washington experience was partly to blame.
Asked if he thought the EPA administrator would keep his job, Inhofe said, “We don’t have the most predictable president in America. Anything could happen.”