The Sierra Club on Friday accused the Environmental Protection Agency of concealing Administrator Scott Pruitt’s work-related emails after the agency, in response to a public records request, said he has sent only one email to anyone outside EPA from his official email address.
The environmental group said it’s unlikely that Pruitt would have sent so few emails during the 10-month period covered by its request to non-EPA officials, considering his frequent meetings with industry officials.
The group also doubts the EPA’s sincerity in producing only one email because of other secretive measures the agency has taken under Pruitt, such as refusing to reveal his public schedule to reporters ahead of time and his use of a $43,000 soundproof booth in his office to conduct sensitive conversations. In September, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to respond to Freedom of Information requests for external communications.
“The idea that Scott Pruitt sent a single work-related external email during nearly a year leading EPA is absurd on its face,” said Justine Thompson Cowan, an attorney representing the group in its efforts to obtain documents from the EPA through Freedom of Information requests. “That’s why the Sierra Club is demanding that EPA search Pruitt’s personal email accounts for work-related communications, or certify definitively that he does not use personal email or secretive messaging applications like WhatsApp and Signal to circumvent records retention laws.”
EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement that “Administrator Pruitt works mostly in person through conversations,” which explains the lack of email correspondence.
The EPA’s inspector general is investigating Pruitt for his use of multiple email addresses and whether federal records requests are searching all of his accounts.
It is one of at least a dozen federal investigations involving Pruitt’s spending, ethics, hiring, and security decisions.
Democratic senators revealed in April that the EPA has four email addresses for Pruitt.
The agency recently said it is reviewing all of its Freedom of Information Act responses under Pruitt to ensure they included all his email accounts.
Pruitt previously used a private email to conduct government work when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general. Government officials can legally use private email accounts, but agencies are supposed to search them when responding to public records requests.
Having several secondary accounts has become common practice by administrators because of the high volume of emails received by their primary account, the EPA has said in defending Pruitt.
The agency’s inspector general also investigated President Barack Obama’s first EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, who used a secondary account under the name “Richard Windsor” for official business.
