CEI:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed suit today in federal court to force the Environmental Protection Agency to turn over phone bills for the EPA-issued PDA issued to Gina McCarthy, a top EPA official and President Obama’s nominee to serve as the next administrator.
CEI’s suit also seeks records EPA has failed to turn over that would reflect whether McCarthy received and/or acknowledged the required training in EPA electronic record use and preservation policies. McCarthy is specifically tasked with ensuring her office complies with these laws and policies, yet apparently not one of her text messages has ever been produced in response to Freedom of Information or Congressional oversight requests for “all records” or “electronic records.” A similar, contemporaneous request produced “Scholar of Ethics” awards to the false identity assumed by the woman McCarthy seeks to replace, former administrator Lisa Jackson. EPA has failed to provide any evidence of McCarthy receiving the required training.
A Senate vote on McCarthy’s nomination could come as soon as this week despite several unanswered questions involving her electronic correspondence and recordkeeping practices, including why EPA is withholding thousands of her emails about the “war on coal” in a lawsuit and unlawfully refusing to produce even factual information such as the dates, parties and subject matter.
“Obama’s EPA is waving red flags all over the place,” said Christopher Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI and author of “The Liberal War on Transparency,” research for which turned up the ‘Richard Windsor’ fake name email scandal and other evidence of EPA avoiding disclosure requirements. “Ultimately, we will learn if EPA’s problems with non-official email accounts, and accounts not identifying the account holder, extend to their use of private accounts for texting or even destroying this alternative to email, as it seems. Resolving the questions in today’s suit, and about her use of a personal account, should be necessary conditions to moving forward on her nomination. This also would do much to address the growing impression Gina McCarthy has something to hide and that EPA is going to great lengths to help her hide it.”
