7/3/18
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides have kept "secret" calendars and schedules to overtly hide controversial meetings or calls with industry representatives and others, according to a former EPA official who is expected to soon testify before Congress. A review of EPA documents by CNN found discrepancies between Pruitt's official calendar and other records. EPA staffers met routinely in Pruitt's office to "scrub," alter or remove from Pruitt's official calendar numerous records because they might "look bad," according to Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt's former deputy chief of staff for operations, who attended the meetings. CNN review which compared Pruitt's public calendar with internal EPA schedules and emails shows more than two dozen meetings, events or calls were omitted from his public calendar. Chmielewski said that some interactions were intentionally removed from Pruitt's calendar after they occurred, such as meetings in June 2017 between Pruitt and Cardinal George Pell, who was charged weeks later with multiple historical charges of sexual offenses. Pell has pleaded not guilty. "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," Chmielewski told CNN. "It was a secret ... and they would decide what to nix from the public calendar." Chmielewski says he was forced to leave the EPA in February after raising questions about Pruitt's spending and management.
If the allegations are true, the practice of keeping secret calendars and altering or deleting records of meetings could violate federal law as either "falsifying records" or hiding public records, according to legal experts interviewed by CNN. "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. Chmielewski said Pruitt's aides would print sections of the private calendar containing details of events, gather around a table, sometimes in Pruitt's office, and decide what would be omitted or altered on the public calendar. He said this often occurred under Pruitt's direction. Representatives of former EPA Administrators Christine Todd Whitman (former Republican governor of New Jersey) and Gina McCarthy told CNN they sought to accurately publicize all meetings and calls with industry and environmental stakeholders. Pruitt is facing at least 14 federal probes regarding his spending, management and ethics.
