Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one accused of using private e-mail servers while with the U.S. government. The legal watchdog, Energy and Environment Legal Institute says a recent Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency produced documents that again show the agency practices what the law group called “circumventing Federal law, conducting official business on private e-mailer servers with ‘green’ interest groups and “industry validator” lobbyists to write rules and regulations.”
What’s the proof? E and E Legal said it was an email sent by Michael J. Bradley, president and founder of a for-profit private energy consulting firm that represents an array of corporate and ‘green’ group advocacy organizations including a group EPA suggested in an email was its “industry validator” for greenhouse gas regulations, the Clean Energy Group. The email was sent to Joe Goffman, senior counsel in EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation in which Bradley said, “Joe, would you please send this email to Gina (McCarthy EPA Administrator) for me? I would have sent it to her directly with a cc to you, but I don’t have a private email address for her and would prefer to not use an office email address.”
E and E said Bradley then spent the remainder of his email to “Gina” and provides two full pages of points he wanted her to consider regarding the Cross-State Pollution Rule. The email was sent at 1:35 a.m. on Sept. 18, 2011. Four minutes later, according to E and E Legal, Goffman sent the email to the Yahoo email account of EPA Policy Office aide Michael Goo who forwarded it to his EPA email account.
“That it is a regular practice of senior officials of this EPA to use private e-mail accounts and other ‘off-book’ techniques to craft rules with ‘green’ activists with clear financial and political interests is now clear beyond a reasonable doubt,” charged Chris Horner, a senior legal fellow with E and E Legal. “The e-mail from Michael Bradley, an individual representing private interests, to Joe Hoffman and Gina McCarthy, which Goffman forwards to a non-official email account of his colleague, are obvous efforts to impact federal regulation outside of the required system.”
Horner, with with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has led the effort that uncovered the fact that former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used an alias of “Richard Windsor” to conduct official agency business using an account that did not identify her.
E and E Legal recently published a report showing Goo’s extensive use of his Yahoo account with green-group lobbyists to craft EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations. But this week, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit hearing challenges to the rules refused to allow the evidence of improper ex parte collaboration into the case.
“This administration has a real problem understanding the rules when it comes to using private email accounts to conduct public business,” said Craig Richardson, Executive Director of E and E Legal. “Hillary Clinton has set the bar for flagrant use of private email to conduct official business ‘off-line’, but EPA comes in at a close second.”
