Scott Pruitt Wants Inhofe's Senate Seat, So He Called Up Two Oil/Coal Billionaires
Scott Pruitt, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump before resigning under a crush of ethics scandals, called two major Republican donors while weighing a run for Senate in Oklahoma in recent weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Pruitt dialed up two billionaires who made their fortunes in the fossil fuel industry — oil tycoon Harold Hamm and coal baron Joseph W. Craft III — said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations.
CBS News first reported last week that Pruitt was considering a run for Senate to succeed Republican Sen. James M. Inhofe, a vocal critic of climate science who announced in February that he will not finish his term and will retire at the end of the year.
The calls to Hamm, the fracking pioneer who chairs the oil giant Continental Resources, and Craft, the president and chief executive of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners, have not previously been reported. Craft is a longtime friend of Pruitt's. The men maintained close ties even as Craft lobbied the EPA to reverse Barack Obama's crackdown on the coal industry. In 2017, the billionaire coal executive even gave Pruitt special access to a high-profile basketball game.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/23/scott-pruitt-called-two-fossil-fuel-billionaires-while-weighing-senate-run-sources-say/