Research Cited

The court-ordered release of tens of thousands of Pruitt’s emails, published as part of a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), expose not just the former Oklahoma lawmaker’s cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry—they also show that many of his official emails were copied to his personal account, contradicting his testimony to the Senate Public Works Committee, whom he told, “I use only my official OAG [office of the attorney general] email address and government-issued phone to conduct official business.”

Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, occasionally used private email to communicate with staff while serving as Oklahoma’s attorney general, despite telling Congress that he always used a state email account for government business.

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt won’t have to turn over more documents detailing his relationship with the energy industry for now, after the Oklahoma Supreme Court yesterday stayed a watchdog group’s open records lawsuit.

In his role as Oklahoma’s attorney general, The Washington Post reported that Pruitt “regularly huddled with fossil fuel firms and electric utilities about how to combat federal environmental regulations and spoke to conservative political groups about what they called government ‘overreach,’ according to thousands of pages of emails made public.”

The emails demonstrated a partnership between Pruitt’s office and the fossil fuel industry, “with frequent meetings, calls, dinners and other events,” Nick Surgey, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy, told the Post.