Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt made it seem as though there was no official contact between himself and Steven Hart, the lobbying executive whose wife owned the condo where Pruitt lived for six months in 2017.

But Hart acknowledged over the weekend that Pruitt met with him at the EPA last July, while the administrator was still living in the condo.

Not only does this revelation enhance the case that the administrator committed serious ethical lapses while running a major Cabinet agency, but it also fits into a broader pattern of advantage-taking that Pruitt began before he ever arrived in Washington.

Hart should have recognized how suspicious this would have looked. But Pruitt was the one in a position of public trust, and it was on him to refuse.

The New York Times reported Saturday that, when he was attorney general in Oklahoma, Pruitt gave state contracts to a law firm run by Kenneth Wagner, an old friend and business partner. The two had bought a luxurious Oklahoma City house together in a complicated transaction that involved a major telecommunications company and ended up profiting them handsomely. That telecommunications firm won kind treatment from Pruitt’s office. Pruitt also bought a minor league baseball team with a staffing company boss whose interests he pushed in the state legislature.

The more Pruitt’s past and present behavior comes to light, the swampier it looks. And this says nothing about the science-denying agenda he has pursued at the EPA. He should never have been tapped to lead the agency. Now that he has proved unethical as well as unwise, it is long past time for him to leave.

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