The conservative group Judicial Watch is taking the Environmental Protection Agency to court over failing to hand over documents detailing its use of social media to promote the Obama administration’s Waters of the U.S. Rule.
The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the EPA to release internal documents and emails related to its use of the Thunderclap social media platform after the Government Accountability Office found its use to be an illegal form of propaganda.
The group pointed out in announcing the legal action Wednesday that the GAO report issued in December 2015 concluded that the EPA’s use of Thunderclap to send out messages to raise support for the Waters of the U.S. Rule “constitutes covert propaganda” prohibited by law.
Judicial Watch gave the EPA until May 3 to divulge internal communications related to its use of Thunderclap, which the agency failed to do. It is now suing the agency in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to force it to release the documents.
The lawsuit was filed late last week, but it only announced the lawsuit Wednesday, spokeswoman Jill Farrell told the Washington Examiner.
“That the EPA is being sued over this flagrant nonsense is the news,” Farrell added in an email. “That they are willing to go to court usually means something unsavory is lurking about, but that’s just correlation, not necessarily causation.”
The lawsuit was announced as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he has begun the process to repeal the Waters of the U.S. Rule. It also comes during the administration’s “Energy Week,” which is meant to underscore President Trump’s push to unravel burdensome regulations such as the water rule to spur increased energy development.
The water rule extends EPA’s jurisdiction and enforcement powers over private landowners by including watering holes and ditches as navigable waterways under the Clean Water Act. The president signed an executive order directing Pruitt’s actions earlier this year.
Thunderclap was used during the comment period to drum up support for the rule and oppose GOP legislation against it. Thunderclap allows a single message to be shared across multiple Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts simultaneously. “EPA engaged in covert propaganda when the agency did not identify EPA’s role as the creator of the Thunderclap message to the target audience,” the GAO said.
The Judicial Watch lawsuit asks the court for five specific items of relief related to EPA’s refusal to answer its FOIA request. First, it wants the court to order the EPA “to conduct searches for any and all records responsive to … [the] FOIA request.” Second, it wants EPA to produce by a certain date “any and all non-exempt records.”
Third, it wants the court to force the EPA from continuing to withhold “any and all non-exempt records” related to the Judicial Watch request. Fourth, order EPA to pay its attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs. And finally fifth, grant the group any other relief that the court “deems just and proper.”
