Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said Friday that the “opposition-party media got a scalp” with the resignation of former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt.
Bannon told The Washington Post that Pruitt’s resignation “is going to have much larger implications than people think.”
“Pruitt was strategic in the deconstruction of the administrative state at EPA, which is the beating heart of this regulatory leviathan,” he said.
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“Pruitt was relatively unique in combining a deep understanding of the issues with the legal chops to take action,” Bannon told the newspaper. “The opposition-party media got a scalp, and it was a big one.”
Pruitt resigned Thursday after facing months of growing ethical scandals. He is currently the subject of dozens of investigations.
Pruitt made deregulation a cornerstone of his agenda at the EPA, working to roll back environmental regulations including the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
President Trump reportedly asked that Pruitt resign after it was reported that EPA staffers scrubbed some meetings from public versions of his calendar, which could be in violation of the Federal Records Act.