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Article snippet: A top aide to former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief MORE wrote a memo earlier this year that appeared to be aimed at absolving Pruitt of blame over a controversial raise given to the aide. Internal EPA documents obtained Wednesday by The Hill offer more details surrounding one of many spending and ethics scandals weighing on Pruitt before his departure in July. Sarah Greenwalt, who was Pruitt’s senior attorney before she resigned in June, received a significant pay increase in March to $164,200, from $107,435, shortly after the White House rejected the EPA’s bid to give her a raise. At the time, Pruitt’s chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, used a special procedure under the Safe Drinking Water Act to get around the White House and authorize the pay raise, as well a big raise to Millan Hupp, Pruitt’s scheduler at the time. Greenwalt’s and Hupp’s raises were especially controversial because both women were close aides who had worked for Pruitt in his previous job as Oklahoma’s attorney general. Hupp, whose salary went to $114,590 from $86,460, told congressional investigators that she helped him with personal tasks like finding apartments and trying to buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel. In a Senate hearing, Pruitt called Hupp “a longtime friend of my wife and myself.” After The Atlantic broke the news of those raises on April 3, Pruitt denied that he was aware of them, despite a previously reported email Greenwalt wrote in February to a ... Link to the full article to read more