EPA/ETHICS/SCOTT PRUITT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Two Democratic Congressmen Thursday [7-5-18] called on the EPA’s Inspector General to investigate whether Administrator Scott Pruitt committed a federal crime by allegedly hiding or falsifying records of meetings and discussions with industry representatives. The calls for the IG to examine Pruitt come two days after an exclusive CNN investigation featuring a former top aide who alleged that the administrator and his staffers held routine meetings to ‘scrub,’ alter or remove controversial events from his calendar..Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, told CNN Pruitt’s aides would print sections of the private calendar containing details of events, gather around a table, sometimes in Pruitt’s office, and decide what would be omitted or altered on the public calendar. He said this often occurred under Pruitt’s direction. CNN found more than two dozen meetings, events or calls detailed in internal EPA documents and emails were omitted from his public calendar. Some of those omitted meetings included a dinner Pruitt attended at a restaurant within Trump International Hotel with coal executive Joseph Craft as well as meetings with Cardinal George Pell, who weeks later was charged with multiple historical charges of sexual offenses, charges Pell denies.”
–Curt Devine, Scott Bronstein and Drew Griffin, “Two Democratic congressmen call for IG probe of Pruitt’s secret calendar after CNN report,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 5, 2018 3:21 pm