EPA IG: ‘No Evidence’ Lisa Jackson Used Fake Name, Private Emails to Evade Transparency Laws

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http://cnsnews.com/news/article/epa-ig-no-evidence-lisa-jackson-used-fake-name-private-emails-evade-transparency-laws

(CNSNews.com) – Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General Arthur Elkins, Jr. “found no evidence” that top agency officials - including former Administrator Lisa Jackson – used fake names and private email accounts to hide their official correspondence from the public in order to evade federal transparency laws.

But attorneys for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has filed several federal lawsuits alleging that EPA officials did precisely that, scoffed at Elkins’ acknowledgment that his investigation was “based only on discussions with these senior officials.”

“It’s kind of comical that he’s come out and said that he’s relying on the very people who are accused of violating federal open government laws to tell him whether there’s any problem,” CEI attorney Hans Bader told CNSNews.com.

“The violations are widespread and deliberate,” CEI senior fellow Chris Horner added, accusing the inspector general of “willful blindness” for suppressing “the extent and seriousness of the violations" of federal transparency laws that have already been revealed in court.

The OIG report did note that EPA lacks “internal controls to ensure the identification and preservation of records when using private and alias email accounts for conducting government business,” warning that “if these critical issues are not corrected, the agency faces the risk that records needed to document the EPA’s decisions would not be available.” (See EPA OIG report.pdf)

The audit of EPA’s records management system was done in  response to a request by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology after it was publicly revealed that Jackson, who resigned last December, had been using the alias “Richard Windsor” to privately correspond with environmental activists, senior Obama administration officials, and lobbyists regarding official EPA business, including the Obama administration’s “war on coal.”

“Richard Windsor” – a combination of Windsor, N.J., where Jackson’s family lives, and the name of her dog, Ricky - was even certified by EPA as a “scholar of ethical behavior.” The phony EPA employee supposedly also completed training courses in records management, cyber security and counter-terrorism.