The Scott Pruitt-led Environmental Protection Agency has sorted guests at public events into “friendly” and “unfriendly” camps in an effort to anticipate tough questions, according to now-public records detailed in a New York Times report Monday.
These details and others were reported for the first time thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the Sierra Club that resulted in more than 10,000 pages of documents from an EPA known for its over-the-top secrecy. The New York Times’ Eric Lipton, who broke down some of the documents in the Monday report, also sued the EPA for access to Pruitt’s calendar.
In one representative effort to pre-empt questions from the public, Pruitt’s scheduling director told a cattle rancher who was organizing an event for Pruitt in Iowa: “With a crowd of 300 people plus open press, we have to stick with the questions we currently have.”
That means, according to the report, that Pruitt would answer questions written by his own EPA employees instead of event attendees.
A spokeswoman for Christine Todd Whitman, former President George W. Bush’s EPA administrator, told the Times of the Whitman-led EPA: “They didn’t selectively inform the press or take any steps to keep things secret.”
In several instances, according to the report, Pruitt’s staff sought to sort event attendees and media outlets into those “friendly” and “unfriendly” to the administrator.
“Sixteen friendly Industry leaders will be invited to attend” an event, according to one memo. After the details of a separate meeting were made public by Missouri Network Television, an EPA staffer asked an event organizer if the news organization was “the friendly outlet.”
“It is,” the organizer, Barry Hart of the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, responded, “but since it’s a public tweet you have to assume the world now knows including all news media … even unfriendly.”
Read the Times’ report in full here.
This guy is truly sick.
…and they want us all to ‘get along’ as long as we assimilate. Got it.
Friendly environment - Unfriendly environment. The EPA will protect the friendly environment.
EPA - the Enrich/Empower/Enhance Pruitt Agency
Everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to ask why the EPA is so secretive and opposed to the public knowing what they (the EPA) are doing. With public monies, from a public agency, in the United States of America.
Not Russia, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or Hazard County for that matter, but the good 'ol US of A.
When I say everyone, I mean the local news outlets, the NYT, Sierra Club, North Face, Tesla, West Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce, you name it.
I mean, we know why, but a lot of people don’t really know why, and they ned to. This has got to stop. Trump’s or rather the GOP/Corporate Polluters agenda is not healthy near or short term, people need to stop with the war on science bs, the climate change denial bs, and face the facts, that Pruitt and Co are working
For how much longer are the American people going to stand by as the likes of Pruitt, Zinke, Carson, Bannon, Trump, and the rest of Trump’s goons run our government like their own private country club?
This is despicable behavior that must be brought to a stop!