The Environmental Protection Agency’s acting inspector general accused top agency officials Thursday of seeking to undermine him.
Acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan, a career official, said in a memo that EPA general counsel Matt Leopold was gravely misrepresenting what EPA officials are required to do to comply with requests from the watchdog office.
“He offers free rein to agency staff to refuse OIG requests for information,” Sheehan wrote, adding Leopold allows the EPA to “decide the bounds” of how much it must work with the inspector general.
Sheehan also said Leopold has suggested the inspector general doesn’t have the right to receive all the information it requests from EPA officials when conducting audits.
Were that interpretation to govern, Sheehan wrote, it would mean the Inspector General Act, which set up watchdog offices at the EPA and other agencies, is “hollowed out,” and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s hope for a cooperative relationship with the inspector general is “nullified.”
Sheehan’s strongly worded memo is the latest in an escalating back-and-forth between political officials at the agency and the inspector general, an independent office within the agency that investigates waste, fraud, and abuse. Last week, the watchdog office accused EPA chief of staff Ryan Jackson of stonewalling two investigations, at least one of which dates back to the tumultuous tenure of former Administrator Scott Pruitt.
The inspector general’s office has said Jackson is refusing to reveal how he received testimony from an independent EPA science adviser ahead of a 2017 congressional hearing.
Jackson has been accused by Democratic lawmakers, including House Science Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, of pressuring that science adviser, Deborah Swackhamer, who at the time led the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors, to change her testimony. The inspector general’s office opened an investigation into the incident in 2017 at the request of Johnson and other Democratic lawmakers.
The inspector general has also said Jackson rejected meetings with the office’s staff for an interview.
Wheeler and Leopold, however, have staunchly defended Jackson. Leopold, in a memo of his own on Tuesday, said Jackson and other EPA officials have attempted to set up meetings with the inspector general since the office raised concerns.
The EPA also released a chain of emails in which Jackson accused staffers from the watchdog office of harassing his assistant to demand a meeting and trying to trap him in a “bait-and-switch” during an interview.
“The fact that you cannot and will not provide the subject of what you want to meet with me about is unprofessional, and I’m not participating,” Jackson wrote in one of the emails released, an Oct. 9 email to Craig Ulmer, deputy assistant inspector general for investigations. “Unless you have further substantive information, do not contact me further.”
It isn’t clear yet whether the back-and-forth will increase pressure on Trump EPA officials from Democrats on the Hill. Trump’s nominee for inspector general, Sean O’Donnell, is pending in the Senate, and he appears to have bipartisan support.
Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is looking to be a potential mediator in the dispute between the EPA and the inspector general.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, he encouraged the watchdog office to be “clearer about what it needs from EPA so that EPA officials can comply accordingly.” Carper also urged EPA officials “to be cooperative and responsive with the IG so that the IG can do its job.”
