An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aide helped Administrator Scott Pruitt shop for housing, sometimes during work hours, months before the aide was given a 33 percent pay raise, several sources told The Washington Post.
The EPA denies the aide, Millan Hupp, had anything to do with finding housing for Pruitt to move into after renting a discount bedroom from the spouse of a top energy lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Pruitt blamed “staff” Wednesday for giving Hupp a 33 percent raise. Pruit has since undone the action.
“This is not news,” EPA Spokesman Jahan Wilcox told WaPo in regards to Hupp’s alleged house hunting. “The notion that government resources were used to assist in finding housing is categorically false. Administrator Pruitt and his wife looked at numerous housing options.”
Hupp communicated with real a real estate company between July and September in 2017 and visited several potential living spaces for Pruitt.
Federal officials using subordinates to run errands or take care of the official’s personal matters is illegal and constitutes a misuse of government resources.
“There’s a general prohibition against misusing government resources, and employees are government resources,” former-Office of Government Ethics acting director and general counsel Don Fox told WaPo. “It’s clearly personal, and frankly, it doesn’t matter if she did it 11 a.m. on a Tuesday or at 2 p.m. on a Saturday if, in fact, that was an expectation of the job.”
Federal officials and lawmakers can ask staff to perform menial tasks and run errands. It’s typically fine as long as the tasks are not condition of employment and done outside of work hours. Some of Hupp’s alleged errands for Pruitt, however, did take place during the work day.
Federal officials and lawmakers are sometimes caught or accused of forcing subordinates to handle personal business.
In 2006, then-legal adviser Sydney Rooks accused former Democrat Rep. John Conyers, who resigned in 2017 amid a slew of sexual harassment accusations, of making her babysit for the sitting member of Congress.
In 2008, a former congressional staffer accused then-Democrat Reps. Jane Harman of California and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii of “forcing congressional staff to perform campaign duties and run personal errands on official time.”
More recently in 2015, a former aide to Democrat Rep. Linda Sanchez of California sued the lawmaker for forcing top staff to run errands for the congresswoman then firing the aide for complaining.
Former-Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who resigned from his post in President Donald Trump’s administration last week, was caught in a storm of potential ethics violations that included using security personnel to run errands. Shulkin was an Obama-era holdover under President Trump.
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