Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is running for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma.
A former state attorney general, Pruitt filed on Friday to fill the seat left open by Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, who has announced plans to retire at the end of the year. Pruitt served in the state Senate from 1998 to 2006 and held office for two terms as attorney general after being elected in 2010.
Pruitt is one of many former Trump officials eyeing Congress as their path to return to public life. Among those running are former President Donald Trump’s first Interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, who is seeking a House seat in Montana, and State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who is vying for a seat in Tennessee.
Pruitt’s move to make it official on Friday came after it was reported last month that he was weighing a run, according to CBS News, making calls to gauge support in a crowded Republican primary. Already, Rep. Markwayne Mullin, former Oklahoma Speaker of the House T.W Shannon, Inhofe’s former Chief of Staff Luke Holland and state Sen. Nathan Dahm are set to battle it out for the Senate seat. Former Rep. Kendra Horn is the first Democrat to enter the race.
Pruitt left his post as state attorney general to lead Trump’s aggressive anti-regulation agenda at the EPA. His tenure was laden with ethics scandals and investigations, in which he ultimately resigned amid allegations he was trying to personally benefit from his office. Most of the department’s inspector general investigations were inconclusive, as Pruitt resigned in 2018 before the investigations were complete.
In his resignation letter to Trump, he praised the president but said the “unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us.” Trump at the time had kind words for his departing EPA chief.
“Look, Scott is a terrific guy,” the president said. “And he came to me and he said, ‘I have such great confidence in the administration. I don’t want to be a distraction.’ And I think Scott felt that he was a distraction.”
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