The Center for Media and Democracy has posted online 7,564 searchable pages of Scott Pruitt’s emails and other records. The watchdog organization pried them loose from the Oklahoma attorney general’s office with a lawsuit. But not in time for U.S. senators to read them before voting last week to confirm Pruitt as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency that he wants to demolish or, at the very least, hamstring. What those emails show is unsurprising given what was already publicly known: Climate science-denier Pruitt is going to be no friend of the environment or the agency he has been chosen to lead.
The Guardian has a story explaining that the emails “reveal close ties with fossil fuel interests.” So does The New York Times, declaring in its headline that he was “Arm in Arm With Industry.” The good folks at DeSmogBlog have done their own analysis, complete with screenshots of a few emails.
Here’s an excerpt from CMD’s press release:
- The oil and gas lobby group American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) coordinated opposition in 2013 to both the Renewable Fuel Standard Program and ozone limits with Pruitt's office. While AFPM was making its own case against the RFS with the American Petroleum Institute, it provided Pruitt with a template language for an Oklahoma petition, noting "this argument is more credible coming from a State." Later that year, Pruitt did file opposition to both the RFS and ozone limits.
- In a groundbreaking New York Times Pulitzer winning series in 2014, Eric Lipton exposed the close relationship between Devon Energy and Scott Pruitt, and highlighted examples where Devon Energy drafted letters that were sent by Pruitt under his own name. These new emails reveal more of the same close relationship with Devon Energy. In one email, Devon Energy helped draft language that was later sent by Pruitt to the EPA about the limiting of methane from oil and gas fracking.
- In 2013, Devon Energy organized a meeting between Scott Pruitt, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and coal industry lawyer Paul Seby to plan the creation of a "clearinghouse" that would "assist AGs in addressing federalism issues." Melissa Houston, then Pruitt's chief of staff emailed Devon Energy saying "this will be an amazing resource for the AGs and for industry."
You can view the document collection here.
Sadly, even if these documents had been available for Senate review last week, it seems unlikely they would have turned any votes. Only one Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against Pruitt. Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of oil-rich North Dakota and Sen. Joe Manchin of coal industry-dominated West Virginia gave him the thumbs-up, more than canceling out Collins in the 52-46 confirmation vote.
Alex Guillén at Politico reported last week:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called the Pruitt vote “an epic ram job,” and said Pruitt himself is “the tool and the minion of the fossil fuel industry.
Given Pruitt’s industry ties, “I don’t see any way his tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency ends well,” Whitehouse said. “Time will tell and facts will [come] out, but I believe our Republican friends will rue the day that they had this nomination rammed through the Senate on the very day that the emails were being litigated in Oklahoma, in order to get ahead of any counterpressure.”
One can certainly hope the senator from Rhode Island is right about Republicans ultimately regretting their decision to hold a vote on Pruitt before the emails were released.
But the widespread hatred of the EPA among Republicans in general and the Trump regime in particular means there’s unlikely to be much regret in the GOP no matter how much damage Pruitt (and his boss in the White House) exact on the agency and the environment itself. Indeed, that damage is precisely what they are eager to get underway.
If they have their way the outcome that really brings out the champagne glasses in this crowd of know-nothings and deniers would not be the complete destruction of the EPA but rather its devolution into a hollow shell that they can pretend still shields the environment while eliminating those allegedly “burdensome” regulations that actually do so.