The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) made nine open records requests to Pruitt’s office starting around January 2015. The requests sought Pruitt’s correspondence with 29 fossil fuel companies, including Murray Energy Corp., Devon Energy Corp. and Koch Industries Inc. (Climatewire, Feb. 15).
CMD filed suit, and an Oklahoma judge told the attorney general’s office in February to turn over the documents or provide them to her.
“There was an abject failure to provide prompt, reasonable access,” Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons said from the bench (Energywire, Feb. 17).
The resulting emails showed Pruitt “closely coordinated with major oil and gas producers, electric utilities and political groups with ties to the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers to roll back environmental regulations.” But many other emails have been withheld and are subject to a lawsuit.