Research Cited

Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said on Wednesday she would oppose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s nomination to head the Environmental Protection Agency, citing his numerous lawsuits against the agency.

Between January 2015 and last month, the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog organization, submitted nine public record requests to the Oklahoma attorney general’s office. This week, it finally received a reply to its first request, filed more than two years ago: a set of 411 emails exchanged between Pruitt and local oil companies. That sounds like a lot—except that the attorney general’s office had initially said more than 3,000 emails were coming.

Today, a group of Senators weighed in with an Oklahoma court on a legal action seeking to require the Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General to release documents relating to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator nominee Scott Pruitt’s connections to the fossil fuel industry. The Senators, all members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, had requested the information from Pruitt during his confirmation process. Rather than divulge it, Pruitt referred the Senators to his own office’s process for requesting documents under Oklahoma’s Open Records Act—a process that can take months, or even years, to complete.