Whistleblower: EPA's Pruitt kept secret calendar to hide meetings
Source: CNN
By Scott Bronstein, Curt Devine and Drew Griffin, CNN
Updated 1057 GMT (1857 HKT) July 3, 2018
(CNN) 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.
A 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.
Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/02/politics/scott-pruitt-whistleblower-secret-calendar/index.html
madaboutharry
(40,220 posts)Of course those prone to corruption would embrace the "I can do anything I want" way of being in the world that is held so dearly by their boss. Trump has a criminal mind. People working for him are following his lead. Pruitt conducts himself this way because the knows that Trump is just fine with it.
lordsummerisle
(4,651 posts)Clarity2
(1,009 posts)I bet he uses disappearing ink too...
exboyfil
(17,865 posts)Javaman
(62,534 posts)Equinox Moon
(6,344 posts)Say, post current administration.
mobeau69
(11,156 posts)stuffmatters
(2,574 posts)Freethinker65
(10,048 posts)He really did not need to scrub them from his official appointment schedule.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,600 posts)Ilsa
(61,698 posts)Mc Mike
(9,115 posts)ehrnst
(32,640 posts)onetexan
(13,058 posts)PREVIOUSLY: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is facing calls for yet another federal probe, this time over his alleged use of secret calendars and schedules to hide controversial meetings with industry players.
In a letter released Thursday morning, Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) asked the EPA Inspector General to open an investigation to determine whether the calendars, revealed this week in a CNN report, violated the Federal Records Act.
Willful concealment or destruction of such records is a federal crime carrying penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment, they wrote.
The investigation would be the 19th federal probe into Pruitts activities this year alone, and the 12th from the EPAs beleaguered internal watchdog.
The letter marks a new milestone in the five-month series of ethical and legal scandals that has become a fiasco, even by Trump administrations unconventional standards.