Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s security detail broke down his apartment’s door last year when they believed he was unconscious, ABC News reported Friday. Citing police radio and sources familiar with the matter, ABC said EPA security workers detailed to Pruitt could not reach him by phone or by knocking on the door of the condo where he was living at the time, which was owned by a health lobbyist married to an energy lobbyist.
The security detail called 911, and dispatchers sent a fire engine and ambulance to the Capitol Hill property. Security officers then broke down the door and went up to Pruitt’s bedroom, ABC said.
Pruitt was found groggy and getting up from a nap, and he declined medical treatment, sources told ABC. The EPA later reimbursed the landlord, Vicki Hart, for the cost of the door. The incident in the afternoon of March 29 is the latest in a series of reports over the last two days about Pruitt’s rental arrangement in the Capitol Hill condo.
Earlier reporting by ABC and Bloomberg found that Pruitt paid $50 for each night he stayed in the two-bedroom property, and the EPA initially said he only used one bedroom. ABC later reported that Pruitt’s daughter, McKenna, had lived in the apartment too for a period of time last year.
Hart told ABC that she had not allowed a second resident to live there.
“The rental agreement was with Scott Pruitt,” she said. “If other people were using the bedroom or the living quarters, I was never told, and I never gave him permission to do that.”
Former federal ethics officials said they are concerned that Pruitt’s arrangement may have violated ethics rules.
The senior counsel for ethics at the EPA said she didn’t consider the arrangement “a prohibited gift at all.” She later told a BuzzFeed reporter Friday that she didn’t know Pruitt’s daughter was renting the second bedroom in the condo when she gave her initial statement.
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