Environmentalists and open government groups have filed more lawsuits against the EPA since President Donald Trump’s presidency than at any other time in the agency’s history, Politico reported Monday.
Plaintiffs have filed 55 public records lawsuits against EPA since Trump’s inauguration, according to a report from The FOIA Project, a Syracuse University project recording open records requests. More than 45 of those lawsuits came in 2017, which shatters the previous record set during the Obama administration.
The second-busiest year was in 2015, when plaintiffs filed 22 suits against the agency during the Obama’s final full year in office. They were leveled as the EPA was finalizing major rules on topics such as wetlands protection and power plants’ carbon pollution.
Other federal agencies have seen increases in public records lawsuits during Trump’s presidency, but the EPA holds the most by a wide margin. As a point of reference — the George W. Bush faced only 57 FOIA lawsuits during his eight years in office, according to the database’s list of cases.
The bulk of the lawsuits were requesting information related to EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s travel expenses and communications. Pruitt’s critics believe the lawsuits are justifiable given the agency’s supposed unwillingness to fork over information.
“The FOIA process isn’t optional,” Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware told reporters. “The American people are entitled to know what government officials, including Mr. Pruitt, are doing with their time and taxpayer money.”
EPA officials maintain that the slowdown stems from the agency’s hassling with a logjam of requests from previous years. The agency has more than 650 requests open from previous years as of early October and has since closed 60 percent of them, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman told reporters.
One conservative group, meanwhile, claimed Pruitt’s EPA is no different than those of his predecessors. Suing has become par for the course, according to Lee Steven, assistant vice president at the Cause of Action Institute, which is also suing the agency for information related to the EPA’s use of private messaging service.
The report comes amid scrutiny of Pruitt’s use of first class travel on international flights. The agency chief has repeatedly argued that the travel plans were necessary given the high-level of security threats he has faced. An Obama-era EPA official confirmed that Pruitt needed a waiver for travel expenses after passengers accosted him over his climate policies.
“He was approached in the airport numerous times, to the point of profanities being yelled at him and so forth,” Henry Barnet, director of the agency’s Office of Criminal Enforcement, told Politico earlier this month. Pruitt’s use of expensive business flights for international flights have created media speculation.
Barnet was responding to media reports detailing how Pruitt racked up nearly $90,000 in flight expenses last June. CBS noted in a Feb. 13 report that Pruitt traveled to Italy in June for meetings at the Vatican and to attend a summit with international energy ministers. The round-trip business-class flight cost at least $7,000, according to the report.
Groups have also groused about Pruitt’s use of phonebooths for private phone calls. The Government Accountability Office opened an investigation earlier this month into the installation of a $25,000 secure phone booth at EPA headquarters.
In a letter responding to Democratic Rep. Pete DeFazio of Oregon, EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins said the GAO has decided to look into “appropriation law questions regarding the installation of the security booth.”
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