The deadline for former Attorney General Scott Pruitt, now the Chief Administrator of the EPA to submit a response to a more than two-year old open records request is Tuesday in Oklahoma County District Court.
In a lawsuit (CV-2017-223) filed by the Center for Media and Democracy based in Madison, Wisconsin, Oklahoma County District Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons ruled Pruitt’s office had to turn over an estimated 3,000 emails. The Center had sought email communications between Pruitt’s office and several energy companies.
The ruling was made last week as attorney Robert Nelon of Oklahoma City and Brady Henderson of the ACLU represented the Center. Assistant Attorneys General Jeb Joseph, Charles A. Dickson III and Kindanne C. Jones represented Pruitt in court.
In the lawsuit, the Center called itself a “nonpartisan, nonprofit media watchdog group that conducts in-depth investigations into the influence of corporations in American democracy.” The Center stated it had filed seven Open Records requests with Pruitt’s office between January 2015 and October 2016 and two more in January 2017.
“CMD has made multiple inquiries concerning the status the January 2015 records request over the past two years and has received correspondence each time saying Pruitt’s office is working on it, with no commitment to a release date.”
In an Aug. 24, 2016 email response to the Center, Jamie Corey with the Attorney General’s office stated, “I have gathered all of the material and I am now going thru (sic) all of it. All of the documents that came from the search have been over 3,000 documents. I am now going through all of them to see what pertains to his request. I cannot give you a time line when this review will be done—as it is very time consuming.”
A month later, Corey wrote the Center again saying the first review has gone through the documents.
“It still needs to go through two more reviewers. One of our problems is we have to do our other work as we go through them. As you can imagine this is all very tedious. I am afraid I cannot give you a timeline. We are working as quickly as possible.”
The focus of the original request concerned at least 29 energy firms, corporations and other groups.
- Peabody Energy
- Arch Coal, Inc.
- Murray Energy Corporation.
- National Coal Corporation.
- American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
- American Coal Council.
- National Mining Association.
- Union Pacific Railroad.
- BNSF Railway.
- Edison Electric Institute.
- Devon Energy.
- Norfolk Southern Corporation.
- American Electric Power.
- Koch Industries.
- Americans for Prosperity.
- The American Legislative Exchange Council.
- The Jeffersonian Project.
- American Petroleum Institute.
- Consumer Energy Alliance.
- HBW Resources.
- Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
- GOPAC.
- Freedom Partners.
- Natural Resources Group.
- American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.
- Hunton and Williams
- Sargent and Lundy.
- Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur.
- Troutman Sanders LLP.