Research Cited

President Trump’s new Environmental Protection Agency chief, Scott Pruitt, may have received emails on a private email account despite telling senators that he only does official business with his government-issued account.

Rachel Maddow looks at new reporting on EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s Oklahoma e-mails, obtained by The Center for Media and Democracy, that shows not only his ties to the oil and gas industry but also his role in a horrific botched execution.

A Madison-based watchdog group says it has started to receive documents from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s time as Oklahoma Attorney General. But the group says Pruitt’s former office has asked a judge to review other records before their potential release.

On Wednesday, two GOP lawmakers from Nevada faced angry voters who complained about Trump, the GOP agenda, and Sen. Dean Heller’s vote to confirm Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

In his new role as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott’s [sic] Pruitt’s job is to enforce rules that he’s been fighting — together with the oil and gas industry — for years. Pruitt became famous for fighting federal environmental regulation in Oklahoma when he was the state’s attorney general, and thousands of emails made public this week show he routinely collaborated with oil and gas companies in their efforts to buck the EPA and other agencies.

On the eve of his confirmation, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt was ordered by an Oklahoma judge to turn over thousands of communications between his office and the fossil fuel industry. But before those records were made public, Senate Republicans rushed to narrowly confirm Pruitt to lead the EPA. Now that the more than 7,500 pages have been released, it is clear why Pruitt had been withholding his extensive correspondences with oil executives from the public for the last two years.