The Trump administration has shown a strange level of inconsistency towards scandal. On the one hand, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price was quickly fired over the use of private jets. Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was supposedly fired over European travel, although that appears to have been an excuse to get rid of him over disagreements over privatizing the VA. On the other hand, we are seeing an unprecedented level of corruption and conflicts of interest between business relationships and government positions involving Trump, his family, and others in his administration.
Todd Pruitt is currently facing a number of ethics issues but, at least for now, these are no concern to the Trump Kleptocracy. CNN suggests that this is because Trump was thinking of replacing Jeff Sessions with Pruitt. CNN reports:
President Donald Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt as recently as this week, even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list of negative headlines, according to people close to the President.
“He was 100% still trying to protect Pruitt because Pruitt is his fill-in for Sessions,” one source familiar with Trump’s thinking told CNN.
Though the President has, at times, floated several people a day for multiple positions in his administration that are already occupied, the proposition reveals just how frustrated Trump remains with Sessions because of his decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation more than a year ago, while signaling how confident he has remained in Pruitt despite a dizzying number of ethics issues.
The irony is that, while Sessions is wrong on virtually everything, the one decision where he did the right thing was recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
NPR has reported on many of the ethical scandals Pruitt is involved in here.
