While House Democrats continue to proceed with their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, his administration’s problems keep growing elsewhere. Now, POLITICO is reporting that the inspector general’s office overseeing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is investigating agency chief of staff Ryan Jackson over allegations that he improperly destroyed sensitive documents and continued doing so even after the issue was brought to his explicit attention. The sought documents include “schedules and letters” involving people like Richard Smotkin, a lobbyist who helped orchestrate a trip Trump’s first EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt took to Morocco that carried a price tag of more than $100,000.
One of the sources speaking to POLITICO apparently personally witnessed Jackson destroy some sensitive documents.
That former administration official shared:
‘They would scold us on a daily basis and Ryan would say, “Oh, I didn’t know, we’ll do better next time.”‘
Former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble said:
‘If you destroy documents with the intent of deceiving the public, it can be a violation of the Federal Records Act. If you decide these documents may be embarrassing and you don’t want the public to see them and therefore you destroy them, you could be violating the Federal Records Act.’
Violations of the Federal Records Act can spark fines and even jail sentences of up to three years.
EPA spokesperson Michael Abboud defiantly responded to the allegations:
‘Even the National Archives have publicly stated these claims are ‘unsubstantiated.’ Politico choosing to run this story on the baseless claims of one disgruntled former employee does not make it true. EPA takes record retention seriously and trains all employees (career and political) on proper protocols and will continue to follow them.’
As Abboud indicates, there’s been a previous investigation into allegations that when on the job, Pruitt buried records of his meetings, but remember — this is the administration led by a man (President Donald Trump) who’s lied well over 13,000 times and counting since taking office. The level of complete, insistent detachment from reality required to get to that point is outlandish.
Jackson has already been facing controversy in recent days. Acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan denounced him for “open defiance” of two investigations including one covering allegations that he pressured scientist Deborah Swackhamer to downplay the EPA’s abrupt dismissal of competent, expert advisers.
‘To countenance open defiance even in one instance — much less two, both by a senior public official setting precedent for himself and all agency staff — is ruinous.’
The stonewalling fits right in with the Trump administration’s behavior in other situations. Although a selection of individuals have broken rank and testified before House impeachment investigators, the White House flatly insisted at one point that they’d not cooperate with a single aspect of that inquiry. That’s culminated in a growing list of officials openly defying subpoenas demanding that they appear for questioning.
Those who have appeared include top Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor, State Department official George Kent, and former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, all of whom will be featured at this coming week’s first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry.
