Deniers rushed to Scott Pruitt’s defense over the last week as scandals continued to emerge and members of Congress called for his resignation. But, unsurprisingly, none of their arguments made much sense.
One of these deniers was Steve Milloy, former director of the self-professed largest privately-owned coal producer in the United States. In his latest Junk Science piece, Milloy complains that it isn’t fair to criticize Pruitt more harshly than the three most recent Democratic EPA administrators, who broke public records laws.
Let’s unpack that.
Milloy points out that Carol Browner, EPA administrator under Clinton, had her hard drive erased on her last day in office. Upon closer googling, it turns out the drive was erased by a contractor, and government lawyers said it was part of the process of transitioning between administrations. Milloy completely fails to mention the reason the act was notable at all: the same day the drive was erased, a judge had ordered the EPA to preserve all records relating to a specific lawsuit filed the previous fall (some of which were presumably on the hard drive). The Washington Post reported that government lawyers believed “the erasure of her hard drive occurred before Lamberth's order was signed,” so it’s unclear whether Browner broke the law at all.
Milloy also reminds us that Lisa Jackson, the first EPA administrator under Obama, hid emails from FOIA requests by sending them under the fake name “Richard Windsor.” The New York Times reported that Jackson said she “used the second account because her public email address was widely known.” EPA Associate Administrator Arvin Ganesan confirmed, explaining that for “nearly two decades EPA administrators have managed the agency with two email accounts” because one is publicly available on the website. While we agree secret email addresses can cause quite a bit of trouble, there was an inquiry into this and nothing juicy was ever found.
Next, Milloy turns his attention to Gina McCarthy, who, he writes, “simply deleted 5,000 text messages rather than turn them over for public scrutiny.” Of course, Milloy doesn’t mention that when Lamar Smith subpoenaed McCarthy for the texts, the Obama administration actually produced them — along with all her phone records dating back to her arrival at the agency in 2009.
Still hungry after all those nothing burgers?
Try as he might, Milloy fails to make Pruitt’s behavior seem excusable. Sorry Steve, but at this point, it just may not be possible to save the EPA administrator from himself.
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