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Former EPA Official With Sketchy Record Levels New Accusations Against Pruitt

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt kept “secret” calendars to hide meetings with industry representatives, according to a former EPA official with a sorted history at the agency.

EPA staffers often convened in Pruitt’s office to nix numerous records from the agency chief’s calendar to cover up a paper trail, Kevin Chmielewski, a former deputy chief of staff for operations at the EPA, told CNN Monday. There are discrepancies in the calendar, CNN reported.

“We would have meetings what we were going to take off on the official schedule. We had at one point three different schedules. One of them was one that no one else saw except three or four of us,” said Chmielewski, who had attended some of the meetings. “It was a secret … and they would decide what to nix from the public calendar.”

Keeping secret calendars and altering or deleting records of meetings could violate federal law, according to some legal experts.

“If somebody changed, deleted, scrubbed a federal record with the intent of deceiving the public or intent of deceiving anybody, it could very well be a violation of federal law,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Some of the redacted meetings were with other government officials, CNN reported, but the bulk of Pruitt’s hidden interactions were with industry representatives.

One meeting happened on April 26, 2017, when Pruitt met with Australia’s environmental minister. But an internal calendar shows he attended a dinner later that day with Alliance Resource Partners CEO Joseph Craft at a restaurant inside Trump International Hotel. Craft, a coal producer who donated $1 million to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, advocated rolling back former President Barack Obama’s environmental regulations.

Chmielewski’s description of the meetings and events dovetails with a trove of documents the agency released to the Sierra Club and Environmental Integrity Project following a slew of public records requests and lawsuits.

Chmielewski told The New York Times in May that he was fired in April for taking issue with Pruitt’s excessive first-class and other travel and office spending. Other members of the administration disagree with that assertion. (RELATED: Career Staff, Not Pruitt, Were Behind EPA’s $43K Phone Booth)

Administration officials said Chmielewski was asked to resign because he failed on several occasions to notify his superiors and other staff members about his whereabouts during long trips, even though they suspected he was doing advance work. EPA officials said Chmielewski was unresponsive while on advance trips, including one to Hawaii.

Chmielewski also had a run-in with a Secret Service detail during the presidential campaign — the secret service agents asked him not to get physical with protesters and let “the police do the policework,” a source with knowledge about the incident told the Washington Free Beacon. (RELATED: NYT Took Its Time Informing Readers Of Key Info About Obama EPA Chief’s Schedule)

TheNYT has reported on Pruitt’s meetings with industry representatives in the past. Reporters at The Grey Lady obtained detailed records in October 2017 of Pruitt’s schedule, which show he “held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates.”

Former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s schedule “also demonstrated a partisan bent.”

“Ms. McCarthy held a disproportionate number of meetings with Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, particularly in the summer of 2014, when the administration was making the case for sweeping climate-change regulations,” TheNYT reported.

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