Judge busts Donald Trump’s EPA nominee Scott Pruitt for illegal coverup; confirmation in chaos
Just one day before the Senate was set to vote on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency nominee Scott Pruitt, a judge in Oklahoma has busted Pruitt for failure to comply with the law in what amounted to an illegal coverup. As a result, thousands of Pruitt’s (likely embarrassing) emails and documents are set to imminently become public – sending his EPA confirmation into chaos.
Scott Pruitt had been sued by a group backed by the ACLU, in an attempt to get the emails and documents made public. Pruitt had simply refused to comply with records requests from the group, even though his refusal was illegal, because he was that intent on making sure that their contents never saw the light of day. But the judge has ruled that this amounted to a failure to abide by the law on Pruitt’s part.
The tricky part is that while the judge has given Scott Pruitt until Tuesday to assemble and release all of the documents in question, the republicans in the Senate have his confirmation vote scheduled for this Friday. The Democrats in the Senate are now doing everything they can to get the Pruitt vote postponed for a few more days, betting that the contents of the emails may be enough to sink his EPA nomination entirely. At the time of publication, the Democrats are in the process of holding the Senate floor all night in the hope of forcing the vote to be delayed.
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