Judge Orders Release Of EPA Nominee Scott Pruitts Fossil Fuel Emails

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-epa-emails-release_us_58a62feae4b07602ad5312e0?hendv21e3dmg6i529&

A state judge has ordered Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office to release thousands of documents related to Pruitt’s communications with the energy industry. The Thursday ruling comes the day before a scheduled Senate vote on Pruitt’s nomination to run the Environmental Protection Agency.

Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons of the District Court of Oklahoma County ruled that the attorney general’s office will have until Tuesday to turn over more than 2,500 emails and other documents. The watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy, with legal representation from the American Civil Liberties Union, had filed a lawsuit against Pruitt earlier this month, alleging that his office had violated Oklahoma’s open records law.

The lawsuit claimed that Pruitt, who has served as Oklahoma’s attorney general since 2011, had failed to respond to nine open-records requests seeking communications between his office and members of the fossil fuel industry, including Koch Industries, Peabody Energy and the National Coal Council. The requests had been filed as far back as January 2015.

“We are doing this because these emails should be released so that people can properly vet his record before the Senate votes to confirm him,” Nick Surgey, director of research for the Center for Media and Democracy, told Reuters earlier this month.

On Thursday, Judge Timmons criticized the attorney general’s office for its “abject failure” to abide by the open-records act, according to the watchdog group.

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