Today in draining filling the swamp, ThinkProgress reports that one of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Scott Pruitt's top advisers owns part of a company that the EPA is cleaning up after.
Senior adviser and Superfund task force chief Albert Kelly owns stock in a company responsible for the creation of more than one Superfund site.
Albert Kelly — who was banned from the banking industry for life for violating federal banking laws — has holdings in Phillips 66, according to a financial disclosure report.
The EPA deemed Phillips 66 responsible for contaminating Bayou Verdine in 2010, which is located in the Calcasieu estuary in Lake Charles, Louisiana. And more recently, in 2016 Phillips 66 was among a group of companies forced to pay to clean up the Portland Harbor Superfund site — a process which is expected to take 30 years.
Kelly had no experience in environmental policy before he was hired by former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt. And perhaps not coincidentally, Kelly also hails from Oklahoma where he owns land that collects royalties from fossil fuel extraction and mining.
There is a very high probability that Pruitt hired Kelly for no other reason than he's an industry crony who may otherwise be unemployable.
Pruitt appointed Kelly to lead an effort to streamline the Superfund program. Around the same time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) fined Kelly $125,000 over banking violations. That was followed by a ruling in July by the FDIC to ban Kelly from banking for life, The Intercept reported in December. The FDIC determined that Kelly’s actions showed his “unfitness to serve as a director, officer, person participating in the conduct” of a bank, according to documents obtained by E&E News.
They're all bad, but Pruitt may be the worst cabinet secretary in the Trump regime.