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04.05.2018 0

Environmental radicals go all out against Scott Pruitt

By Printus LeBlanc

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you know there is a concerted effort to get Scott Pruitt fired. He has been a constant target of the left, but the recent announcement about ending “secret science” in the EPA has sent the radical environmentalists crazy. Who is doing this, and where are they getting the money?

The attacks have been fast and furious against Pruitt. One of the first complaints flung at Pruitt was about the cost of his air travel. The administrator took a trip to Italy to meet with his European counterparts in June of 2017. The left is apparently upset that it cost slightly over $30,000 for the security detail to accompany Pruitt.

What most of the mainstream media is not telling the people is that since Scott Pruitt assumed the EPA Administrator post he has received four times the threats against himself and his family than the previous EPA Administrator received. The extra security and first-class seating are needed to protect Mr. Pruitt. If the radical environmentalists don’t like the cost, they should stop threatening him.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) even dared to complain about the EPA’s spending on the Pruitt detail stating the amount is, “excessive or inappropriate and whether it detracts from the agency’s ability to investigate environmental crimes.” Maybe if the Senator from Rhode Island would speak to the radical environmentalists about their threats to Mr. Pruitt’s safety the EPA would not have to spend so much. I bet he never complains about security costs for the Senate.

Another complaint centered around Pruitt renting a room from a friend at $50 per night, before he found a place for his family to join him. It is only a story because the friend happens to be a lobbyist for an energy company. The EPA’s chief ethics counsel Justina Fugh cleared the stay stating, “the arrangement wasn’t an ethics issue because Pruitt paid rent.” A quick search on craigslist will verify that $50 per night is the market price for a room.

One of the critical groups leading the charge against Mr. Pruitt is the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The radical group was founded in 2002 by Eric Schaeffer, a former disgruntled EPA employee. EIP is dedicated to ending the fossil fuel economy. Seems like a typical radical environmental group, until the funding comes to light.

EIP has received over $700,000 from a group known as the Energy Foundation. A 2014 Senate report called the Energy Foundation a “pass through.” It is an organization that receives tens of millions from other charities and foundations to dole out to groups that can do the activist work the donors are not allowed to do. It is one of these main funders of the Energy Foundation that raises eyebrows.

The Sea Change Foundation is a San Francisco based group that has given tens of millions to the Energy Foundation. The Sea Change Foundation gets their money from a variety of funders, but $23 million came from Klein Ltd out of Bermuda. Klein Ltd is interesting because according to a report exploring the link between environmental groups and the Kremlin, “Klein Ltd. Klein Ltd., a corporation that ‘only exists on paper’ and is based out of a Bermuda law firm called Wakefield Quin.”

Wakefield Quin is a law firm tied to Russian oligarchs Leonid Reiman and Mickail Fridman (two close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin), along with Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft. Because of Bermuda secrecy laws, this is where the trail of environmental cash ends. This begs the question, are firms connected to Russia funding the radical environmental movement? This would make sense considering the energy policies of Scott Pruitt.

The energy policies of President Trump, enacted by Scott Pruitt, scare radical environmentalists and Russia to death. Russia profits financially and geopolitically when energy prices are high. Oil and gas revenue make up a sizable portion of Russian government revenue and cannot be happy the U.S. is moving towards energy dominance. An energy dominant America, embodied by policies that end the war on coal, and supporting drilling and fracking, do not allow environmentalists get to push unproven unreliable green policies. The USSR was famous for using radical leftists as “useful idiots” in the Cold War, and now it looks like the more things change the more they stay the same.

Clearly, there are no valid claims being levied against Scott Pruitt. The left simply hates him (yes hates, just look at the threats) and will do anything to stop him and push their radical agenda, even if they have taken Russian money in the past to cripple U.S. energy production. The President has already voiced support for Pruitt, and he should continue to do so and ignore these baseless attacks from people that want him to fail.

Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.

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