by Chris Horner, E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow
As Appearing on Watts Up With That

Former Secretary of State, and presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is not the only current or former Obama administration official facing investigation for use of a private email account skirting federal record keeping laws. The list of offenders recently grew longer, with an interesting twist.

In late May, House Science Committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DoE) seeking private-account emails of a former key staffer. He was following up on revelations from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests I made on behalf of the Energy & Environment Legal Institute. Chairman Smith also wrote to the former appointee, a man named Michael Goo currently ensconced on Capitol Hill as a Democratic lawyer.

E&E Legal had learned that Goo, also formerly with the environmentalist pressure group NRDC, used his Yahoo email account to correspond on work-related issues with former NRDC colleagues, and lobbyists for Sierra Club and other interests. He did so specifically in developing EPA’s controversial greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations expected to go final later this summer.

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