Salon: Trump administration’s massive corruption may finally compel real reform — if Democrats win

Scott Pruitt may be gone as head of the EPA, after multiple accusations that he exploited his office for financial gain. But he isn’t done profiting off his role as the point man on Donald Trump’s efforts to destroy environmental regulation. Last week, the New York Times reported that Pruitt is making plans to start a new consulting firm — and his first client is likely to be  Joseph W. Craft III, a coal baron whose lobbying of the EPA during Pruitt’s short stint at the agency involved at least seven personal meetings in 14 months.

The story exposes the flimsiness of the “ethics pledge” the Trump administration has imposed on political appointees. The pledge supposedly requires Pruitt to avoid direct lobbying to the EPA on behalf of his client, but it’s likely that his purpose at the new firm will be to support and shape such lobbying efforts. …

Of course, Pruitt’s story isn’t surprising. Many political commentators predicted this would happen as soon as he was forced out of office, especially since the Trump administration has been especially flagrant about letting members put their hands in the cookie jar. Trump himself has clearly used his presidency to generate cash, shamelessly leveraging his private clubs and hotels as places where wealthy people can spend lavishly, with an obvious eye towards buying favorable treatment. As ProPublica reported in May, at least six former administration officials who swore they would not go into lobbying for five years after leaving government service have already become registered lobbyists.But this very revolving-door corruption is raising hopes in some circles that political momentum can be built towards passing legislation to curtail it.

“The Trump administration’s complete disregard for ethical norms shows we need big, bold solutions to try to close many of these loopholes that the  administration employs and former officials are exploiting,” Aaron Scherb, director of legislative affairs at Common Cause, told Salon. …

One proposal on that front is the Ethics in Public Service Act, which would codify an ethics pledge signed by members of the Obama administration, which Scherb said “had a number of good provisions” and was replaced under Trump by one that the one “was significantly weaker in some ways” (and has been blatantly ignored by many people who have left the administration).  …

And while there might be some wiggle room in other proposals for what Pruitt is doing — which is to claim that his job is not lobbying, even though he walked directly into an industry he was recently responsible for regulating — Warren’s bill has provisions that Scherb said “would specifically bar” the kind of loophole-carving that Pruitt is engaged in.

Specifically, there’s a provision in the bill barring any organization, for one year, from hiring any senior government official who worked in an agency the organization has lobbied in the past two years. In other words, all those meetings that Pruitt had with Craft while he worked for the EPA would mean Craft couldn’t pay Pruitt a dime — even to mow his lawn — for an entire year. Considering how grabby Pruitt’s records showed him to be, that’s likely longer than Pruitt wants to wait to cash in.