Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn’t the only federal figure in hot water for using a personal email account to conduct official government business.
Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee pressed Rafael Moure-Eraso, embattled director of the Chemical Safety Board, to resign Wednesday after it was learned he has used his personal email address to conduct government business and appears to have misrepresented the extent of that use in previous testimony before Congress.
In an especially heated hearing, lawmakers blasted the agency leader for creating a culture that has driven nearly half of its employees to quit since 2011.
Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, called the Chemical Safety Board “a dysfunctional, unfair and unproductive organization.”
“Until you leave this organization, these problems are going to persist,” Chaffetz told Moure-Eraso. “There is something rotten to its core, and it is you.”
Several lawmakers questioned whether Moure-Eraso’s used a personal email address to mask his business activities.
Meadows demanded to know why Moure-Eraso’s previous testimony was “inconsistent” with his subsequent actions.
“Do you understand that you’ve violated the Federal Records Act? You’ve violated the law,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said to Moure-Eraso during the hearing.
But the safety board official denied knowing he was engaging in any illegal activity by declining to use his government email address.
“I disagree with your premise that the purpose of using a personal email was to oppress people,” Moure-Eraso said.
Chaffetz played a video clip from a previous committee hearing in which the Chemical Safety Board head insisted the practice had long been discontinued.
Moure-Eraso had then admitted to using his personal email address “out of ignorance at the beginning of my tenure.” He claimed to have stopped using the account in January 2013.
When Chaffetz pressed Moure-Eraso on whether he had conducted business with his personal account since that time, the Chemical Safety Board official said he would “have to check his records” because he didn’t remember.
But the inspector general told Chaffetz the official had used his account eight months longer than he had told the committee, and perhaps even as recently as 2014.
“This is the pattern with you. Once you’re presented with facts, then you change your story,” Chaffetz said.
Wednesday’s hearing followed a critical Environmental Protection Agency inspector general report that highlighted Moure-Eraso’s use of a personal email account among other management problems.
