Washington Post Reports EPA Chief Used Aide And Donors To Help His Wife Get A Job.
CAMEROTA: Another controversy involving EPA chief Scott Pruitt. "The Washington Post" is reporting that Pruitt used one of his aides to ask Republican donors to find his wife a job. Joining us now is the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub. Walter, another day, another episode of what did Scott Pruitt do now. What is Scott Pruitt thinking?</s>WALTER SHAUB, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, FORMER DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF ETHICS, CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER: There seems to be no bottom to this ethics catastrophe with Scott Pruitt. He just keeps expanding the list of ethics violations and nobody's doing anything about it. You can't even pretend there's an ethics program anymore when you've got Scott Pruitt running around inventing new ways to violate the ethics rules. And in no other administration would this man still have his job.</s>CAMEROTA: Here's the scroll of the things that he has done -- the ethics violations that are questionable. You need a magnifying glass in order to read these because there are so many of them. As you know, he rented this room from well below market price. He was constantly dining at the White House mess hall until they had to ask him to eat someplace else. It was not supposed to be for him. He used an aide to inquire about a Chick-fil-A business opportunity. He spent nearly $3.5 million of the taxpayer dollars on his security detail -- first-class travel -- though they have released no security threat as far as we know when asked. There are no credible threats. I could go on and on but it's only a 3-hour show. When you say that nobody's doing anything, what can be done about Scott Pruitt?</s>SHAUB: Well, for one thing, the president could fire him, which is what would have happened in any past administration, or Congress could put some effort into conducting any kind of oversight at all. There was a recent hearing in the past couple of weeks where Pruitt went and testified and his fans on the committee were disingenuously claiming that any complaints about Scott Pruitt are necessarily partisan. But the only thing partisan going on here is their intense defense of him because just look at that scroll. It's mind-boggling. I have never seen anything like this with the sheer number of violations. Scott Pruitt just seems to be fundamentally unfit for public service. And I'm sure there were plenty of other candidates who would have been as equally enthusiastic about deregulation as him. So there's nothing partisan about this because the president can just replace him with somebody who has the same views, but it would be nice if he'd find somebody who isn't a serial ethics violator.</s>CAMEROTA: That, by the way, scroll that we were playing while you were talking, that wasn't on a loop. We weren't repeating any of that. Those are all individual line-item ethical violations. So even some vocal people in conservative media now, such as Laura Ingraham on Fox, are calling him out. Here's what she tweets. "Pruitt bad judgment hurting [the president]. Gotta go," she says. I mean, is this what's finally going to tip the scales?</s>SHAUB: Well, I hope so. I mean, we saw, this week, a few conservative outlets finally speaking up. I don't know why they're so late to the party because again, you can easily find somebody, including his deputy administrator, who will have the same views. But it seems that the White House has no interest in government ethics. It's just simply irrelevant. And that, of course, was my experience with them when I was leading the Office of Government Ethics and it's why I had to finally resign because this White House is not only indifferent, it's actually hostile to government ethics. And the president's allies in Congress, again, are sabotaging any efforts to address Pruitt's violations by labeling it partisan.</s>CAMEROTA: OK. Speaking of ethics, Jared and Ivanka. The report is that they have made $82 million in outside income in this first year that they have served in the White House as the president's top advisers. Is that OK?</s>SHAUB: Well, I mean, I don't know how they find any time to do their jobs when they are making so much money on the outside. A decision was made when they came in to let them keep all of these assets. And the reason that decision was made was nepotism. There's a reason we have nepotism laws. And all of these assets that he holds in -- Jared Kushner, in particular, are of a nature that presents significant potential for conflicts of interest because you don't just go to a bank and take out a mortgage to build a skyscraper. You need infusions of cash from outside sources and that makes him vulnerable to foreign governments and foreign businesses. Our Intelligence agencies discovered last year that at least four foreign governments were plotting to use his financial interests to manipulate him. And many of his financial interests are connected to entities and governments in the Middle East where he's supposedly in charge of a Middle East peace plan. I think the bottom line is if you're going to break with tradition, commit nepotism, allow your guy to keep all of these assets, you've got to engage in transparency where you tell us the true nature of your interests and what your assignments are, and they're just not doing that.</s>CAMEROTA: Walter Shaub, we are very grateful for your expertise in all of this and that you are attempting to keep everyone honest here. Thank you.</s>SHAUB: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: We will talk to you again. We're following a lot of news so let's get right to it.</s>RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: All of us know he shouldn't testify unless we get everything we want.</s>CAMEROTA: President Trump's lawyers plotting their next moves as Michael Cohen splits with his legal team.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This looks to me like it's moving in the direction of cooperation.