The cardinal rule of Scott Pruitt: Just when you thought he couldn’t possibly get any more dumb and unethical, there’s always a new low. This time, documents obtained by the New York Times Thursday show that when the EPA administrator was in Rome last June, he dined with Cardinal George Pell, a climate denier that Pruitt’s team knew was under investigation for child sex abuse. (Pell is slated to stand trial for these offenses.)
According to an email sent by an EPA staffer during their dinner, Pruitt and Pell discussed a Wall Street Journal article that proposed setting up a two-sided “debate” about man-made climate change, something that has long been pushed by fringe climate change denial groups. Leonard Leo, head of the conservative Federalist Society, was also at the dinner, making it sound more and more like a very special kind of hell.
Curiously, Pruitt and Pell’s meeting was left off of or redacted from four different official EPA schedules. Apparently, Pruitt hates the environment so much that he just had to dine with an accused child abuser and then try to hide it from the public’s view. According to the Times, dinner at the restaurant where they dined costs $240 per person.
The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Hill on Thursday. Splinter has also reached to the agency and will update this post if we hear back.
Pruitt is already engulfed in a web of ethical nightmares of his own making. But the fact that he hasn’t yet lost the ability to shock us with new, contemptible depths is really something.