Yeah, I saw that on Newsmax the other day and was thinking of posting it but it seemed too unbelievable. Can you imagine! What hypocrites....
newsmax.com
Saturday, April 28, 2001 5:21 EDT
Clinton's EPA Chief Destroyed Evidence in Defiance of Court Order
The same day a federal judge ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to preserve evidence relevant to a lawsuit over the Clinton administration's last-minute environmental regulations, former EPA chief Carol Browner ordered underlings to destroy her computer files.
On Jan. 19, 2001 - the last full day of the Clinton administration - Federal District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction against the EPA, ordering the agency to preserve all records potentially responsive to a lawsuit brought by the Virginia-based legal watchdog group the Landmark Legal Foundation.
Landmark is seeking information that might indicate the identities of any outside special interest groups - such as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace - that may have had a hand in crafting Clinton's deluge of last-minute environmental regulations.
The Clinton administration's attempt to further tighten regulations of arsenic in the drinking water, for instance, is based on questionable scientific assumptions and seems designed for purely partisan political purposes, Republicans say.
The new arsenic law was signed by the ex-president just 72 hours before he departed the White House while in the midst of rewarding six-figure campaign contributors with pardons.
The green lobby strongly backed Clinton throughout both of his terms in office and environmentalists were among his most generous financial contributors.
Yet despite the court order to preserve any evidence of collusion between the EPA and green pressure groups, Browner and two other senior EPA officials had their computer hard drives erased, the agency admitted in court Friday.
In response to the EPA's open defiance of his order, Lamberth has granted Landmark's request to depose Browner and other agency officials and ordered a full report to the court about what could turn out to be an attempt to obstruct justice by a Clinton Cabinet member.
"For seven months the EPA has refused to make public information about the influence special interest groups may have exercised over the regulatory process in the last days of the Clinton administration," said Landmark President Mark Levin on Friday.
"Now the EPA admits that some of that evidence was destroyed even though the court ordered it preserved. This is a very serious matter." |
