House Committee on Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith threatened to issue a subpoena if the Environmental Protection Agency continues to refuse to turn over to Congress a host of official emails, cellphone text messages and other communications.
“If EPA continues to withhold emails, text messages and other documents from the committee, I will have no alternative but to consider the use of compulsory process to obtain the requested documents and information,” the Texas Republican told the agency’s administrator, Gina McCarthy in a letter made public Monday.
The committee previously requested all emails and text messages from agency officials in an investigation to determine if the agency improperly deleted such documents from McCarthy’s work phone. The environmental agency provided some documents on Feb. 26, but didn’t include any text messages or emails.
“Those documents and information are central to the committee’s investigation,” Smith wrote.
“Documents provided by EPA demonstrated a continued lack of transparency at the agency,” he continued. “EPA responded two weeks after the committee’s due date with information that appears to be already publicly available.”
The chairman demanded all the requested documents be submitted to the committee by March 13.
Smith also noted that a federal judge last week sharply criticized the environmental agency’s handling of the Freedom of Information Act request.
“The agency either intentionally sought to evade the FOIA request in order to destroy documents or demonstrated extreme apathy and carelessness,” Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote in his decision.”It is obvious to the court that the EPA has, once again, fumbled its way through its legally unambiguous FOIA obligations.”
Smith said his committee intends to “ensure this is not typical agency practice.”
Smith’s document request stemmed from EPA officials telling the National Archives and Records Administration that it had possibly lost text messages to and from McCarthy’s predecessor, Lisa Jackson. The agency also suggested that neither federal law nor regulation requires preservation of text messages.
The archives’ regulations have since at least 2009 required preservation of all emails and text messages to and from federal officials concerning official business. Such communications also must be preserved in order for federal officials to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.
Smith said in his letter to McCarthy that the committee has evidence the environmental agency withheld communications to and from other senior officials besides McCarthy.
The environmental agency has been a focus of controversy over its lack of transparency throughout President Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office. Three years ago, Christopher Horner, a Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar, exposed Jackson’s use of a fake name — “Richard Windsor” — on a government email account, as well as her private email account, to conduct official business.
It was subsequently learned that at least three regional administrators of the environmental agency also used personal email accounts to conduct official business.
