Investigating Power
Climate, Democracy, Environment, Koch
A few days after Pruitt’s February 17 confirmation, over 6,000 pages of his emails were made public. They prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the new head of the EPA has been working hand-in-glove with big oil and gas producers, electric utilities and political groups with links to the billionaire Koch brothers to gut environmental regulations.
Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy, which sued Pruitt’s office to release the documents, described Hunter’s request as a delay tactic and said she’s confident they will ultimately win the case and receive thousands more emails.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has granted a request by the Attorney General’s office to delay a lower court’s order requiring the agency to turn over records sought by a watchdog group.
The Center for Media and Democracy sued the agency in February to force it to handover emails sent during the tenure of former attorney general Scott Pruitt, now administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Climate, Democracy, Environment
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.
After appointing a Goldman Sachs executive to run White House economic policy, President Donald Trump’s administration hired a roster of other White House economic advisers who will oversee federal policies that affect their former corporate employers. The next day, Trump delivered a speech to Congress pledging “to drain the swamp of government corruption” and crack down on lobbyists.
Climate, Democracy, Environment
The chief justice of Oklahoma’s Supreme Court on Tuesday gave the state’s new attorney general more time to produce thousands of documents related to the relationship that new Environmental Protection Agency leader Scott Pruitt had with energy companies.
Climate, Democracy, Economy, Environment, Trump
President Donald Trump sent out his budget blueprint to federal agencies Feb. 27, seeking to slash the budget for the EPA and other agencies while boosting defense spending by $54 billion.
Climate, Democracy, Environment
— EPA administrator Scott Pruitt “occasionally” used private email to communicate with staff while serving as Oklahoma’s attorney general, despite recently telling Congress that he always used a state email account for government business. The AP: “Emails released under court order last week in response to a different public records request yielded additional examples where emails were addressed to Pruitt’s private account, including a 2013 exchange with a petroleum industry lobbyist who emailed Pruitt and a lawyer on the attorney general’s staff. That suggests Pruitt made his private email address available to professional contacts outside his office. It is not illegal in Oklahoma for public officials to use private email as long as they are retained and made available as public records. [Still], Pruitt’s use of the private account appears to directly contradict statements he made last month as part of his Senate confirmation.”
Climate, Democracy, Environment
Pruitt is also facing scrutiny for a large batch of emails showing that he closely coordinated with fossil fuel companies to undermine federal environmental safeguards. The Center for Media and Democracy had requested those emails more than two years ago, but Pruitt’s attorney general’s office only turned them over after CMD filed a lawsuit and an Oklahoma judge ruled that Pruitt had been illegally withholding the documents.
Climate, Democracy, Environment
Last week, we learned more. Additional records released – under court order, after an “abject failure” to respond to a two-year-old open records request from the Center for Media and Democracy – further underscore Pruitt’s troubling pattern of transactional relationships.