by Michael Bastasch
The Daily Caller

The Environmental Protection Agency inspector general has been accused of covering up Obama administration “transparency abuses violating several federal laws” by conservatives in the wake of a report ostensibly absolving the agency any wrongdoing in handling government records requests.

A recent EPA IG report claimed there was “no indications of bias” in the agency’s Freedom of Information Act to grant or deny fee waiver requests to conservative groups. The investigation was launched by the EPA after conservative groups and several states accused the agency of stonewalling FOIA fee waiver requests to prevent politically unfavorable information from becoming public.

But the conservative watchdog group Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI) said that the EPA IG report was designed to avoid examining the actual evidence of EPA wrongdoing.

“In short, after EPA’s bias was exposed and subjected to scrutiny, the Agency tread water until the threat passed; then it came back against these groups more aggressively than ever,” EELI wrote in a report rebutting the EPA IG’s findings. “Then, OIG designed its inquiry in a way that ensures the threat had passed, leaving it once again covering for EPA transparency abuses violating several federal laws.”

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