CEI Experts: Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Has Hired a Lawyer ‘Because She Needs One’

WASHINGTON, D.C, Aug. 21, 2013 – Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has hired an attorney to represent her in a congressional investigation into her use of private and secret email addresses to conduct agency business, according to media reports. Jackson resigned Dec. 27 after Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, revealed she had used the name ‘Richard Windsor’ in email correspondence to avoid having her emails subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

But she was back in the news this week when emails produced by EPA as part of a court-enforced FOIA request by Horner revealed she had asked a lobbyist for Siemens, which does contract work for the agency, to use her home email for future communications.

“Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has hired a lawyer because she needs one, which is the latest sign that the EPA e-mails are a real scandal and not just about technicalities,” said Myron Ebell, director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment. “And it’s not just former Administrator Lisa Jackson.  Gina McCarthy, the new EPA Administrator, is up to her neck in this scandal.  As Assistant Administrator for the first 4 1/2 years of the Obama administration, she is part of the senior team that has been trying to cover up its decision-making processes by ignoring the deadlines for complying with Freedom of Information Act requests.  

“President Obama promised his would be the most transparent administration in history.  Instead, the EPA has stonewalled numerous requests for information the public has a legal right to know.  Since the Obama administration’s decisions on global warming regulations will cost American consumers trillions of dollars and destroy millions of jobs, it has become critical that the federal courts enforce the Freedom of Information Act.”