Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, who is embroiled in multiple investigations into his ethics and spending, apparently made a "plea" to executives at the American Petroleum Institute last year to submit candidates for open EPA positions, BuzzFeed News reports. Pruitt's eyebrow-raising call came just a month after he started leading the agency, with the manager of federal government affairs at the oil company ConocoPhillips writing to an EPA aide in March 2017: "I understand that Administrator Pruitt met with the API executives last week and he made a plea for candidates to fill some of the regional director positions within the agency.