Department of 'justice'

The usual Trump stuff. Surreal as per usual. Words fail.

…oh and btw, fwiw, notice how the headline is anti-russian. They ‘coulda’ said CIA in that headline — naturally they went with KGB…ok, ok, i’ll shut up…
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KGB:https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/08/15/scott-pruitt-turning-epa-kgb
Scott Pruitt Is Turning the EPA into the KGB
by
Alex Formuzis

Scott Pruitt, polluters’ puppet and head of the Environmental Protection Agency, knows most Americans are strongly opposed to his anti-public health, anti-kids, anti-science agenda. That’s why he does all he can to hide it.

A devastating report in The New York Times details the extraordinary and unprecedented steps Pruitt is taking to keep secret his efforts to roll back decades of progress on drinking water and air quality, toxic chemicals in consumer products, and environmental justice. Among the revelations uncovered by reporters Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton:

According to current EPA employees, when summoned to meetings with Administrator Pruitt, staff must “have an escort to gain entrance” to his office, are “told to leave behind their cellphones” and “are sometimes told not to take notes.”
Wherever he goes, “even at E.P.A. headquarters,” Pruitt is “accompanied by armed guards, the first head of the agency to ever request round-the-clock security.”
In an apparent effort to block any trail of communications with industry officials that could be captured in a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request, Pruitt “often makes important phone calls from other offices rather than use the phone in his office.”

The inescapable conclusion, says David Roberts of Vox, is that Pruitt’s stealth is “the only approach possible to advance an agenda that is unpopular and intellectually indefensible.”

The Times reports that in the last two months, the EPA “has received more than 2,000 Freedom of Information requests, many of them focused on Mr. Pruitt, asking for every possible record related to his tenure, including text messages, telephone records and even his web browsing history.”

EWG and our colleagues at American Oversight are among the public interest groups that have filed many of the FOIAs seeking details about Pruitt’s communications with polluters.

In April, EWG and American Oversight filed a FOIA with the EPA and the Department of Agriculture, demanding all communications between agency officials, pesticide manufacturers, and outside groups that have advocated for the continued use of chlorpyrifos – a neurotoxic pesticide known to cause brain damage in children – on food crops. This came in response to Pruitt’s alarming decision to summarily reverse a scheduled ban of the pesticide that was set into motion by the Obama administration. In June, EWG and American Oversight filed a lawsuit against Pruitt and the EPA for failing to produce those records….see link…