Bad Oil Man Lived in Bad Oil Condo 

Where do you imagine EPA administrator Scott Pruitt goes home at night? A concrete basement filled with finger paintings of Charles and David Koch? A remote forest cottage haunted by the demanding ghost of Rumpelstiltskin? A sweat lodge? A sensible two-bedroom in Arlington? Wrong! For most of his first year in D.C., ABC News reports, Scott Pruitt lived in a townhouse that is co-owned by the wife of energy lobbyist J. Steven Hart.

How strange that this bad oil man is connected to that bad oil man, no? Could this connection possibly represent… a conflict? Let’s learn more:

In 2010, the newspaper Roll Call referred to the Harts as a “lobbyist power couple.”

Mr. Hart is the chairman and CEO of Williams and Jensen, a firm that reported more than $16 million in federal lobbying income in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Among his many clients are the NRA and Cheniere Energy Inc., which reported paying Hart’s firm $80,000 a year.

Hart’s firm specifically lobbied on “issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG), approval of LNG exports and export facilities.” The firm also lists on its website that it lobbies on other EPA policies like the Clean Air Act.

Hm, well, that could just be—

Cheniere Energy Inc. owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time. Liquid natural gas exports was on the agenda for discussion during Pruitt’s December 2017 trip to Morocco, according to an agency press release.

On the trip, Pruitt pitched “the potential benefit of liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Morocco’s economy,” the release said.

Ah.

Well, “What happens in Morocco…”, as the old Environmental Protection Agency saying goes!