Scott Pruitt, Trump’s scandal-ridden EPA official, has filed to run for a US Senate seat in Oklahoma

• Former EPA chief Scott Pruitt has filed to run for a soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Oklahoma.
• Pruitt was the top of the EPA for seven months below the Trump administration.
• Throughout his time there, he confronted scrutiny for questionable spending and rollbacks of assorted environmental protections.

Scott Pruitt, the previous administrator of the Environmental Safety Company below former President Donald Trump, has filed to run for a US Senate seat in Oklahoma. 

Sen. Jim Inhofe, 87, stated he’ll retire and vacate the seat subsequent 12 months. 

Pruitt filed on Friday to marketing campaign for Inhofe’s seat. Pruitt served two phrases as Oklahoma’s legal professional basic. Previous to that, he was a legislator with the Oklahoma Senate for 2 phrases. 

Because the EPA head, Pruitt held the appointment for seven months earlier than resigning in 2018 amid a string of scandals, as Insider’s Kevin Loria reported. 

A number of selections he made as EPA administrator additionally attracted the eye of federal investigators. He, for instance, earned scrutiny for putting in a$43,000 safe cellphone sales space in his workplace with out conferring with federal lawmakers. A federal watchdog decided that Pruitt violated spending legal guidelines by doing so. 

The watchdog additionally discovered that Pruitt spent tens of millions on a 24-hour safety element that was greater than triple the dimensions of safety particulars for earlier EPA directors.

He additionally put in requests for a $100,000-per-month non-public jet membership, a bulletproof car, and $70,000 spending cash for workplace furnishings that included a bulletproof desk, all of which have been denied.

Other than ethics scandals, Pruitt presided over a collection of fast, widespread rollbacks of protections designed to help human and environmental well being. He additionally had a historical past of displaying favoritism to the fossil gas trade.

He tried to repeal the Clear Energy Plan, a coverage put in place by the Obama administration requiring energy crops to cap their greenhouse fuel emissions. He additionally backed the rollback of the Clear Water Rule, which barred industries from dumping varied pollution into streams and wetlands. 

Moreover, he inspired Trump to withdraw from the historic Paris Local weather Settlement, a world treaty adopted in 2015 that pushed for important cuts to greenhouse fuel emissions worldwide.

Insider’s Kevin Loria contributed to this report.