After The Atlantic reported that embattled Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s communications team has been pushing negative stories attacking embattled Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Western Values Project (WVP) submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the EPA to find out what they know about Secretary Zinke.
For more than a year, the Montana-based Western Values Project has filed various FOIA requests with the Department of Interior, published a comprehensive research site on the Department at https://departmentofinfluence.org/ and released numerous reports on the Interior Department’s troubling conduct that has undermined the nation’s public lands.
In response to The Atlantic story, Western Values Project Executive Director Chris Saeger released the following statement:
We have a simple request of Administrator Pruitt: make public all the material your team has been pushing on Secretary Zinke. The public has a right to know what EPA officials are saying behind closed doors to reporters about their ethically-challenged colleagues in the cabinet. Western Values Project aims to hold policymakers to account, and we appreciate the staff at the Environmental Protection Agency helping expose any wrongdoing that Secretary Zinke’s been involved in.”
Also published on Medium.