Witness encounter at EPA starts probe
Official not helping, Congress told
Environmental Protection Agency officials are in a standoff with the agency’s independent watchdog over a probe into EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson’s reported efforts to influence a scientist ahead of her congressional testimony.
In a letter released publicly Wednesday, acting EPA Inspector General Charles Sheehan informed Congress that his office had encountered a “flagrant problem” in light of Jackson’s refusal to cooperate with an ongoing audit and investigation focused on his activities while in office.
“To countenance open defiance even in one instance — much less two, both by a senior official setting precedent for himself and all agency staff — is ruinous,” Sheehan wrote.
Agency officials have pushed back at the accusations, arguing that they had sought to accommodate the inspector general’s requests. “I have neither delayed nor refused to fully cooperate with EPA’s Inspector General,” Jackson wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler that was released by the agency.
The dispute, which involves two different probes, has escalated to a level not seen in at least six years. One former senior EPA official said that while the office has threatened to notify Congress about disputes multiple times in the past, “generally, cooler heads prevailed before that point.”
The EPA’s office of inspector general has launched several probes of top Trump appointees at the agency over the past 2½ years, most of which focused on former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s spending and management decisions. But it closed two of its biggest inquiries without reaching any conclusions a year ago, noting that it had failed to interview Pruitt before he resigned in July 2018.
Wheeler warned lawmakers in a Nov. 5 letter that one of the inspector general’s requests, that Jackson identify who provided him with an advance copy of the written testimony of environmental chemist Deborah Swackhamer, “implicates constitutional concerns.”
Swackhamer, chairman of the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors until Pruitt removed her and several other advisers in late 2017, criticized the Trump administration’s approach to science in testimony before Congress in May 2017. Shortly before she appeared, Jackson chastised her for not alerting the EPA’s congressional affairs staff that she planned to speak to lawmakers and questioned the accuracy of some of her remarks.
On June 26, 2017, top Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology demanded that the inspector general investigate the issue.
Jackson refused to tell investigators how he obtained Swackhamer’s testimony in advance, telling them, “I am not going to involve others or point fingers. … Welcome to Washington.”
In a Tuesday opinion delivered to Wheeler, EPA General Counsel Matthew Leopold questioned why the office would investigate a matter connected to a congressional hearing. “How Congress takes testimony or from whom it receives final testimony is not a proper area of inquiry for the [office of inspector general],” he said.
Inspector general staff members have also questioned Jackson on the 2018 firing of Pruitt scheduler Madeline Morris, according to two federal officials, including what compensation she received after she stopped showing up at headquarters.
In his letter, Jackson questioned the investigators’ tactics, noting that two investigators from the inspector general’s staff initially went to his office unannounced on July 23 to question him about a personnel matter. When they returned the next day, he said, they changed the topic of the discussion.