‘Offensively Unapologetic’ at the EPA: A Judge Finds the Agency Withheld Documents and Then Lied About It.

Posted By on March 4th, 2015

http://www.wsj.com/articles/offensively-unapologetic-at-the-epa-1425429233

Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t the only one apparently baffled by newfangled technologies such as email (see nearby). In a withering ruling on Monday, a federal judge scored the Environmental Protection Agency for its contempt for its legal obligation to disclose documents and then lying to the courts about its stonewalling.

In 2012 the right-leaning Landmark Legal Foundation made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for emails related to regulations and the forthcoming election. As many suspected at the time and we now know, the White House commanded the agency to delay major anticarbon rules so the details couldn’t be debated in front of voters, thus undermining political accountability for the economic damage.

The EPA spent years attempting to deny Landmark a meaningful response, starting with the receipt of the FOIA request. The agency’s FOIA officer waited weeks before informing the offices of then EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and her deputies of the obligation to retain documents. The agency subsequently refused to search either the official email accounts of top officials or the alias personal email addresses they used to conduct government business—“for reasons still unexplained,” Judge Royce Lamberth observes in a 25-page finding against the agency.

Not until December 2014 did Judge Lamberth force the EPA to conduct a more than perfunctory search, whereupon the agency suddenly produced some 365 documents responsive to Landmark’s request. All the while the EPA misrepresented its search efforts to Judge Lamberth, moving to withdraw these statements of fact only after it was obvious they were false.

The judge concludes that the EPA either “intentionally sought to evade Landmark’s lawful FOIA request so the agency could destroy responsive documents, or EPA demonstrated apathy and carelessness toward Landmark’s request. Either scenario reflects poorly upon EPA and surely serves to diminish the public’s trust in the agency.” He denied Landmark’s petition for punitive sanctions only because there is no conclusive proof the agency acted in bad faith.

Judge Lamberth also notes that EPA hasn’t offered “any indication of regret” and is “offensively unapologetic.” The next time this happens, and it will, he should hold the EPA’s lawyers in contempt.

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