The Environmental Protection Agency released the first round of emails as in response to a lawsuit filed by a conservative group concerned that Environmental Protection Agency Chief Administrator Lisa Jackson was using an “alias” email account to conceal her communications from public disclosure.
The suit sought access to messages from Jackson’s alternate email account using the terms “coal,” “climate,” “endanger,” or “MACT”.
However, the release was called “deeply troubling” by Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner, the man behind the lawsuit and discovery of Jackson’s email alias “Richard Windsor.”
“In very short, this response is deeply troubling, and seems to have gravely compounded the unlawful activity we have exposed involving a false identity assumed for federal recordkeeping purposes,” Horner said in written statement, noting that the EPA only released about two-thirds of the promised 3,000 emails.
“It seems that EPA simply decided they had to produce a lot of something,” he added. “Desperate to produce nothing at the same time, they came up with this.”
The EPA release contains more than 2,100 emails from Jackson’s secondary account that include at least one the of the search terms that CEI established. The EPA said it will release 12,000 such emails.
“As you are aware, the Administrator uses one secondary official government email account to conduct EPA business,” writes the EPA in the cover letter for the released emails. “This official account was established for practical purposes, and its contents are maintained in accordance with federal recordkeeping guidelines and are searched in response to FOIA requests.”
Horner told the The Daily Caller News Foundation in November that Richard Windsor was the name of the alias email account used by Jackson.
Subsequently, The DC News Foundation published screenshots from sources that showed the profile of the secret “alias” email account allegedly used by Jackson was loaded on three computers under her name, as well as the computers of other agency employees within her office.
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