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AG Paxton Leads Coalition of 11 AGs to Defend the First Amendment on Climate Change Policy Debate | Office of the Attorney General

September 09, 2016 | Amicus Brief

AG Pax­ton Leads Coali­tion of 11 AGs to Defend the First Amend­ment on Cli­mate Change Pol­i­cy Debate

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an amicus brief yesterday in defense of the First Amendment. The brief explains that the Attorney General of Massachusetts exceeded her constitutional authority by attempting to shut down a viewpoint on an issue of scientific debate – climate change.

At the “AGs United for Clean Power” press conference, a coalition of liberal state attorneys general announced they were going to use their official authority to go after one side of the policy debate on climate change. This overt use of governmental power to shut down particular viewpoints is a blatant violation of the Constitution. In this case, the Massachusetts Attorney General issued a Civil Investigative Demand against Exxon Mobil Corporation for its “marketing and sale of fossil fuel-derived products and securities,” demanding over 40 years of internal company documents. Exxon is seeking to block the Civil Investigative Demand from being enforced.

Attorney General Paxton and ten other state attorneys general are asking the court to grant Exxon’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the subpoena.

“The Constitution was written to protect citizens from government witch-hunts that are nothing more than an attempt to suppress speech on an issue of public importance, just because a government official happens to disagree with that particular viewpoint,” Attorney General Paxton said when filing the brief.

In addition to Texas, the other states who joined the amicus brief are Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, and Nevada.

Click here to view the Amicus Brief

63-21

:{:{IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS FORT WORTH DIVISION EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION, ) ) Plaintiff, ) ) v. ) No. 4:16-cv-00469-K ) MAURA TRACY HEALEY, ) Attorney General of Massachusetts, ) in her official capacity, ) ) Defendant. )}:

BRIEF OF TEXAS, LOUISIANA, SOUTH CAROLINA, ALABAMA, MICHIGAN, ARIZONA, WISCONSIN, NEBRASKA, OKLAHOMA, UTAH, AND NEVADA AS AMICI CURIAE}:

Attorney General of South Carolina

LUTHER STRANGE

Attorney General of Alabama

BILL SCHUETTE

Attorney General of Michigan

MARK BRNOVICH

Attorney General of Arizona

BRAD SCHIMEL

Attorney General of Wisconsin

DOUG PETERSON

Attorney General of Nebraska

SCOTT PRUITT

Attorney General of Oklahoma

SEAN REYES

Attorney General of Utah

ADAM LAXALT

Attorney General of Nevada

KEN PAXTON

Attorney General of Texas

---

==

mystery solved!

wealthy activist who has funded efforts to block a proposed mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay donated $250,000 to President Donald Trump's re-election effort six weeks after the administration abruptly decided to prevent the mine from moving forward.

The move to block the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay from moving forward seems to diverge from a trend in policy under the leadership of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt -- seen as one of President Donald Trump's most productive cabinet members in moving to undo environmental regulations put in place under the Obama administration. During the Trump presidency, the EPA in 2017 had previously allowed the mine to move forward.

The EPA said the change in course was because the environmental risk was too great and announced on January 26 that the mine would not immediately move forward.

Robert Gillam made his second and largest donation to Trump Victory Fund just weeks later, donating $250,000 on March 9, according to FEC filings.

Gillam has previously spent as much as $2.5 million to block the Pebble Mine from moving forward in Alaska's fertile fishing ground called the Bristol Bay. He has been advocating against the mine since 2005, according to an Alaska state report. He declined to comment for this story.

Gillam has previously donated to the Republican National Committee, Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Republican campaigns in Alaska.

He went to Wharton with Trump and met with him at Mar-a

...

==

off alec bs

omfg

ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP

Attorney General Scott Pruitt Selected to Run EPA

Pruitt is a Former Oklahoma Senator and ALEC Member

JOHN EICK/DECEMBER 8, 2016

At a conference hosted by the North Dakota Petroleum Council this past May, then-candidate Donald Trump unveiled an ambitious “America First Energy Plan,” a slate of reforms designed to ease many of the regulatory burdens imposed on the energy industry during the Obama years.In his introductory remarks, President-elect Donald Trump identified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a principal offender, warning the “totalitarian” agency sought to “control every aspect of our lives.”

Despite his trademark rhetorical flourish, Trump is certainly on to something. Over the past eight years, the Obama-led EPA has unleashed an onslaught of harmful, job-killing regulations all while chipping away at the cooperative federalism model that has long undergirded the agency’s relationship with the states.

In selecting Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to serve as Administrator of EPA, President-elect Trump has found just the right person to bring fresh leadership and much-needed reform to an agency currently out of control. Anyone who values striking a balance between sensible environmental regulations and the rule of law should delight in Pruitt’s appointment.

Coming from a position in state government (and especially from an energy-producing state), few have a better understanding of the impacts of EPA’s regulatory overreach than Pruitt. As the chief legal and law enforcement office of the State of Oklahoma, he has led coalitions of state attorneys general in challenging the legality of a litany of EPA regulations including the Regional Haze rule, the Waters of the United States rule, and the Clean Power Plan. As Pruitt explained during the 2014 ALEC Annual Meeting, these regulations collectively do little in the way of protecting public health but plenty in the way of needlessly driving up energy costs and usurping regulatory authority from the states.

Pruitt has also sounded the alarm on so-called “sue and settle” litigation where environmental activist groups collude with EPA and other agencies to render official policy at the expense of the states. In 2013, he joined attorneys general from 11 other states in suing EPA over the proliferation of these sweetheart settlements. As administrator, he will be in a position to significantly curtail the abuse of such citizen lawsuits.

President-elect Trump has vowed to bring “honesty, accountability and change to Washington.” General Pruitt’s record of accomplishment suggests that he will bring those very same qualities to EPA. For the first time in a long time, we will have an EPA administrator who will work constructively with industry and the states to spur economic growth while protecting our precious environment. It’s been long overdue.

Published: December 8, 2016  Issues: Environmental Stewardship, Energy

==

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/us/scott-pruitt-lobbyist-house.html

thehill

Scott Pruitt

once purchased a house from a top lobbyist in Oklahoma with the help of a shell company, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Two business associates involved in the 2003 purchase are now aides to Pruitt at the agency: Kenneth Wagner, a senior adviser at the EPA, and Albert Kelly, who runs the agency's effort to redesign the Superfund program.

According to the Times, the home, which was seen as a prime property because of its proximity to the state Capitol building, was purchased for $375,000 from a retiring telecommunications lobbyist.

But that price was $100,000 less than the lobbyist, Marsha Lindsey, had paid for it just a year before. The shortfall, according to the Times, which examined the records, was picked up by Lindsey's company, telecom giant SBC Oklahoma.

The company, now a subsidiary of AT&T, lobbied on a number of matters including a deregulatory bill that would allow it to raise rates and an effort to reopen a decade-old bribery case. According to the Times, Pruitt sided with the company on both matters.

Pruitt, then a state senator, intended to use the residence as a place to stay while Oklahoma's legislature was in session. During this time he also rented out a room to another Republican state senator, Jim Dunlap.

Wagner, who was a partner at the private legal practice where Pruitt worked, was a co-investor in the shell company that purchased the residence.

Kelly wasn't involved in the shell company but ran the community bank which issued the mortgage for the residence. Kelly was later barred for life from the banking industry by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) because the agency had “reason to believe that [Kelly] violated a law or regulation, by entering into an agreement pertaining to a loan by the Bank without FDIC approval.”

The two now hold top positions at the EPA.

In 2005, the company owned by Wagner and Pruitt sold the residence for $95,000 more than it had paid just two years earlier.

Dunlap told the Times that he had no knowledge that Pruitt had purchased the residence from a lobbyist. He said he was under the impression that Pruitt had purchased it from a group of lawyers.

“This was a place where you slept and had dinner,” Dunlap told the Times. “It was all above board.”

The Oklahoma deal is only the latest in a series of stories raising ethics issues involving Pruitt.

Pruitt was reported earlier this month to have been living in 2017 in a Washington, D.C., condo partly owned by the wife of a top energy lobbyist at a rate of just $50 per night, which he and others have insisted was market value.

The EPA chief also came under fire after it was discovered that two top aides received raises after the White House declined to approve the pay hikes.

When asked about the Oklahoma house deal and Pruitt's business relationship with his top appointees, an EPA spokeswoman told the Times that the dealings "were ethical" and that Pruitt's stake in the company "was a simple real estate investment.”

“Mr. Wagner and Mr. Kelly left high-profile positions in law and banking in Oklahoma, to serve in the administration,” the spokeswoman said in an email to the Times.

“They are dedicated EPA employees who have earned the respect and admiration of EPA career employees across the country. They serve the country professionally, and transparently — and are committed to ensuring the programs they work on are successful.”

==

==

Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has made some questionable claims related to global warming, fracking and the Clean Power Plan.

A self-described “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda,” Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general since 2011, has repeatedly sued the agency and other government entities over environmental rules and regulations, at times in direct cooperation with fossil fuel companies.

Pruitt’s questionable claims include:

The Senate will first have to confirm the president-elect’s nomination before Pruitt is officially appointed the administrator of the EPA.

While Democrats won’t hold the majority in the Senate next year, many have vowed to fight Pruitt’s confirmation, Politico reported on Dec. 8. The website wrote, for example, that Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said “it’s ‘hard to tell’ if Democrats can rally enough Republicans to block the nomination, but vowed to ‘thoroughly vet’ Pruitt during confirmation hearings.”

Politico added that “Pruitt’s confirmation would mark a seismic shift for EPA” due to the fact that all EPA administrators since the 1980s have sided with the large body of scientific evidence that supports human-caused global warming.

Climate Change Skeptic

In a May *National Review* op-ed, Pruitt questioned the scientific consensus concerning global warming.

Pruitt, May 17: Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.

As we have written over and over and over again, it’s wrong to claim that the “debate is far from settled” — the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that at least half of it is due to human activity.

First, multiple surveys involving thousands of climate scientists have found that about97 percentof them believe global warming is real and human activity is the primary cause, as we wrote last year.

Second, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its fifth assessment report published in 2013 that it’s “extremely likely” that more than half of the global temperature rise since 1950 is due to human activities, as we also wrote last year.

We have fact-checked similar claims by Trump numerous times, as recently as November.

The Clean Power Plan and Other Lawsuits

Similar to the president-elect himself, Pruitt has stated an interest in keeping the country’s air clean, but primarily through state regulation. But when environmental issues cross state lines, they can “sometimes require federal intervention” from the EPA, Pruitt said in May.

Pruitt’s suits against the EPA have had mixed results, however.

In his first year as attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA for federal overreach in its Cross-State Pollution Rule, which addresses air pollution from coal power plants that crosses state lines via wind currents. Effectively, the rule aims to prevent downwind states from being held responsible for pollution produced upwind.

In 2014, Pruitt lost the case when the Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that prevented the rule from taking effect.

Early in his tenure as attorney general, Pruitt also sued the EPA over its Regional Haze Rule, which requires states to work with federal agencies to develop plans to reduce haze that limits views in national parks and wilderness areas. The EPA rejected Oklahoma’s plan in 2011 and instead sought to implement its own stricter standards, which prompted Pruitt’s suit.

Haze is the product of sunlight interacting with pollution particles in the air, explains the EPA. The pollutants that make up haze have also been linked to human health and environmental issues such as respiratory illnesses and acid rain. “Most of this haze is not natural. It is air pollution, carried by the wind often many hundreds of miles from where it originated,” the agency says.

After a lower court concluded in July 2013 that the EPA “lawfully exercised” its authority in replacing the state’s plan with its own, Pruitt asked the Supreme Court to review the case. In May 2014, the Supreme Court rejected Pruitt’s request.

Pruitt also has sued the EPA over the Clean Power Plan, along with 26 other states, citing federal overreach of the agency.

The EPA finalized the plan in August 2015. The plan aims to reduce carbon pollution from the power sector to 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, says the EPA. Unlike the Regional Haze Rule, the Clean Power Plan aims to regulate coal power plant pollution specifically to combat climate change, says the EPA.

However, on Feb. 9, 2016, the Supreme Court placed a hold on the plan based on state opposition.

In the May National Review op-ed, Pruitt said the plan would “significantly” increase electricity prices for Americans. This is a matter of opinion, but according to the Energy Information Administration, changes in electricity prices with the plan would vary depending on the region, with one region seeing an estimated price decrease. Price changes would vary because some regions would have to make bigger changes than others and may take different routes to compliance, the EIA explains. 

For example, in Texas, one of the states that is suing the EPA over the plan, the EIA estimates electricity prices would be 7 percent lower in 2025 with the plan compared to without it. While the state would see a 4 percent increase in prices in 2030, electricity prices would be the same in 2040 regardless of whether or not the plan is implemented.

Texas would see a price reduction in 2025 because the state “adds a large amount of wind capacity in the early years of the projection period to take advantage of available federal tax credits,” the EIA says.

In the region where Oklahoma lies — the Southern Plains — the EIA projects electricity prices would be the same in 2025 with or without the plan. After 2025, electricity prices would be, at most, 4 percent higher with the plan than without it.

The Northeast, a region where no state has sued the EPA over the plan, would see the largest price hikes for the nation overall with a 7 percent increase in 2030 with the plan, compared to without it. (New Jersey has sued the EPA over the plan, but the state doesn’t fall under EIA’s delineation of the Northeast in its electricity estimates.)

The EIA projects the Northeast would see the largest price hikes because the region relies heavily on natural gas and because it has a “competitive pricing market.” 

Electricity prices for the U.S. as a whole would be at minimum 1 percent higher in 2025 and at maximum 5 percent higher in 2030 with the plan compared to without it, the EIA says.

Most recently in August, Pruitt sued the EPA over methane regulations on oil and natural gas production. “Pound for pound, the comparative impact of [methane] on climate change is more than 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period,” says the EPA. The suit has yet to be settled.

Pruitt has worked directly with energy companies in opposing the EPA’s regulations.

In December 2014, the New York Times reported that Pruitt had sent letters to the EPA arguing that it overestimated air pollution, including methane, produced by new natural gas wells in Oklahoma— and the Times found that the letter was written nearly word-for-word by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas companies. Oklahoma is one of the top oil- and gas-producing states in the country.

Pruitt’s office “rejected any suggestion that the attorney general has been wrong to send to Washington comment letters written by industry lobbyists, or to take up their side in litigation,” the Times also reported. “It is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant,” his office told the newspaper.

Muddied Fracking-Water Link

Also similar to the president-elect, Pruitt has said he’s interested in keeping the country’s water clean, but again through state, not federal, regulations. However, Pruitt has made questionable claims about the potential link between hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and water contamination.

Fracking is a technique used to retrieve natural gas and oil from rock below the earth’s surface. The process involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into wells at high pressure, releasing oil and gas that would otherwise be difficult to recover.

In February 2014, Dan Engelberg, the then-director of water issues at the EPA’s Office of Program Evaluation, said his office would begin “preliminary research on the EPA’s and states’ ability to manage potential threats to water resources from hydraulic fracturing.” In response, Pruitt sent a letter in April 2014 to Engelberg, saying he was concerned that the project was “politically motivated.”

Pruitt, April 2014: I am concerned that this project is politically motivated and ignores the EPA’s three previous failed attempts to link hydraulic fracturing to water contamination. In addition, the US Department of Energy has investigated hydraulic fracturing’s potential harm to water supplies and found no evidence linking the drilling technique to groundwater contamination.

We reached out to Pruitt’s office to ask which investigations by the EPA and the DOE Pruitt was referring to then, but we have yet to hear back.

Regardless, scientists didn’t have enough data to reach a definitive conclusion about the link (or lack thereof) between fracking and water contamination across the country then — and they still don’t now. More research must be done to confirm or refute whether water contamination involving fracking is widespread.

As we explained in early December, much of the debate surrounding whether fracking has led to groundwater contamination stems, in part, from a lack of water quality data predating fracking and oil and gas production in general.

In a June 2015 draft report, the EPA reported specific cases of water contamination related to fracking, but it said that it “did not find evidence” that fracking has “led to widespread, systemic impacts to drinking water resources in the United States.”

But the EPA’s own advisory board told the EPA in August that it didn’t “quantitatively” support its conclusion or define the terms “systemic” and “widespread,” among other issues. In order to keep its conclusion intact in the final draft, the agency should address these issues, the advisory board said.

The EPA published the final report on Dec. 13. During a press conference on the same day, Thomas Burke, EPA science adviser and deputy assistant administrator, said that, after taking into consideration comments on the draft report, EPA scientists decided to retract the “widespread, systemic” conclusion.

He summarized the final report’s findings accordingly: “There is scientific evidence that hydraulic fracturing activities can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances,” he said. These circumstances include spills of fracking fluids, fracking in defective wells and inadequate disposal of fracking fluids, all of which have occurred.

Burke explained further that EPA scientists retracted the conclusion about “widespread, systemic” impacts because “[s]ignificant data gaps and uncertainties limited our ability to estimate the national frequency of impacts.” The data needed to make this conclusion hasn’t been collected, isn’t publicly available or is very difficult to aggregate, he added.

Thus, contrary to Pruitt’s implication, there’s some evidence linking fracking and water contamination in select cases, but there’s not enough evidence to conclude whether or not this phenomena is widespread.

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.

Correction, Dec. 15: We originally said Dan Engelberg was the director of the EPA’s Office of Inspector General. He was the director of water issues at the EPA’s Office of Program Evaluation. We have corrected the article accordingly ... President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of the oil and gas intensive state of Oklahoma, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a move signaling an assault on President Obama's climate change and environmental legacy.

He is the third of Trump appointees who have key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run. Ben Carson, named to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has expressed a deep aversion to the social safety net programs and fair housing initiatives that have been central to that agency's activities. Betsy DeVos, named Education secretary, has a passion for private school vouchers that critics say undercut the public school systems at the core of the government's mission.

The news about the choice of Pruitt was confirmed by a transition official, who would not speak for attribution before the official announcement.

Pruitt, who has written that the debate on climate change is "far from settled," joined a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the agency's Clean Power Plan, the principal Obama-era policy aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He also has sued, with fellow state attorneys general, over the EPA's recently announced regulations seeking to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector.

On his Linked In page, Pruitt boasts of being "a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda."

After he was elected attorney general in 2010, Pruitt established a "Federalism Unit" to "more effectively combat unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach by federal agencies, boards and offices," according to his online bio.

And he has gone on to challenge the administration not just over the environment but over a host of other areas. He joined other Republican attorneys general in a lawsuit over Obama's immigration policies. He has also sued the administration over the Affordable Care Act, saying the health care mandate on religious employers to provide coverage including contraception was unconstitutional. He has sued over theDodd-Frank financial reform.

An ally of the energy industry, Pruitt, along with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, came to the defense ExxonMobilwhen it fell under investigation by attorneys general from more liberal states seeking information about whether the oil giant failed to disclose material information about climate change.

"We do not doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of our fellow attorneys general about climate change and the role human activity plays in it," they wrote at the conservative publicationNational Review. "But we call upon them to press those beliefs through debate, not through governmental intimidation of those who disagree with them."

In an interview with the Washington Post in September, as a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court was preparing to hear arguments over the Clean Power Plan, Pruitt detailed why he has remained a leading opponent of the EPA's efforts to curb carbon emissions by regulating power plants.

"What concerns the states is the process, the procedures, the authority that the EPA is exerting that we think is entirely inconsistent with its constitutional and statutory authority," he said at the time.

Agencies such as the EPA, he said, should not be trying to "pinch hit" for Congress.

"This is a unique approach by EPA, whether they want to acknowledge it or not," he said of the provisions of the Clean Air Act that the agency had relied upon to write new regulations. "Theoverreachis the statutes do not permit [EPA officials] to act in the way they are. They tend to have this approach that the end justifies the means . . . They tend to justify it by saying this big issue, this is an important issue."

But he added that's where Congress should have authority, not EPA. "This is something from a constitutional and statutory perspective that causes great concern."

Environmental groups reactedwith alarm Wednesday at the nomination. And New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman vowed to "use the full power" of his office to wage a legal battle to "compel" enforcement of environmental laws under Trump.

"Scott Pruitt has a record of attacking the environmental protections that EPA is charged with enforcing. He has built his political career by trying to undermine EPA's mission of environmental protection," said Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund."Our country needs - and deserves - an EPA administrator who is guided by science, who respects America's environmental laws, and who values protecting the health and safety of all Americans ahead of the lobbying agenda of special interests."

Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that "over the past five years, Pruitt has used his position as Oklahoma's top prosecutor to sue the EPA in a series of attempts to deny Americans the benefits of reducing mercury, arsenic, and other toxins from the air we breathe; cutting smog that can cause asthma attacks; and protecting our wetlands and streams."

Pruitt has also fought to limit the scope of the federal government in regulating pollution of rivers under the Waters of the United States rule.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.), who has been active on environmental issues, said, "Scott Pruitt would have EPA stand for Every Polluter's Ally."

In 2014, the New York Times reported that a letter ostensibly written by Pruitt alleging that the agency overestimated air pollution from natural gas drilling was actually written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of the state's largest oil and gas companies.

Industry representatives expressed satisfaction with the choice Wednesday."The office he headed was present and accounted for in the battle to keep EPA faithful to its statutory authority and respectful of the role of the states in our system of cooperative federalism," said Scott Segal, head of the policy group at the lobbying and legal firm Bracewell. "Given that we are almost two decades overdue for an overhaul of the Clean Air Act, there is interest on both sides of the aisle to look at that statute."

David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator who represented Pruitt and Oklahoma in challenging the Clean Power Plan, said he believed Pruitt would be able to make sure the EPA lives up to its mission of protecting air and water while avoiding federal overreach.

"General Pruitt has been the leader among the AGs in defending federalism, the key feature of our constitutional architecture," said Rivkin, a partner at Baker Hosteler, adding that he believed Pruitt would "ensure both environmental protection and constitutional fidelity."

Pruitt's outlook reflects his home state: Oklahoma ranked fifth in the nation in onshore crude oil output in 2014, has five oil refineries, and is home to the giant Cushing oil storage and trading hub, where the price for the benchmark West Texas Intermediate grade is set every day. Although oil and natural gas production sagged in the 1990s and early 2000s, the surge in horizontal fracturing, or fracking, has boosted output.

The state's natural gas output accounts for 10 percent of the nation's overall total. For the week ended Oct. 28, there were 73 drilling rigs in operation in Oklahoma.

Pruitt has served as head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a group that has relied heavily on funds from ultraconservative groups and the oil industry.The biggest contributors this year included the Judicial Crisis Network, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute of Legal Reform, Sheldon Adelson, oil conglomerate Koch Industries and Murray Energy, a leading coal mining company.

Pruitt, a Kentucky native who moved to Oklahoma to attend the University of Tulsa law school, has also been active in religious groups. He serves as deacon of the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow. In 2012, Pruitt was named a trustee of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Before serving as attorney general, he was a member of the state legislature.

Dallas investor Doug Deason, a friend of Pruitt, said he expects the Oklahoma attorney general to immediately get to work rolling back the EPA's "silly overreach" and to let states handle environmental oversight.

"Just like most Republican attorney generals, especially in energy-producing states, he has been really frustrated with the government and the EPA's overreach into everything," Deason said.

But Deason said liberals will be happily surprised by Pruitt's "open-minded" attitude, adding that he is "willing to look at things."

"He will bring a more balanced, logical look" at environmental regulation," he said.

Pruitt's selection was strongly supported by Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm.

The nomination suggests an extraordinarily tough road ahead for the Clean Power Plan, president Obama's signature climate policy. However, the precise fate of the regulation most immediately turns on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has not yet ruled in the lawsuit brought by Pruitt and his fellow attorneys general against the agency Pruitt is now named to lead.

"Some have suggested that Pruitt's hands might be tied because he participated in litigation against the agency," Segal said in an email. "This is a silly position. There is no conflict in representing your state on litigation dealing with rules of general applicability and then serving your nation as a federal official."

Dismantling the regulation if it survives the courts would not be simple, because the agency has already finalized it - meaning that to undo and replace it would require a public notice and comment process. Environmental groups would likely sue the agency over such a move.

However, some of the Clean Power Plan's objectives appear to have been already realized long before it came into effect. The United States is already burning less coal and more natural gas, meaning fewer carbon dioxide emissions.

In 2030, the EPA projected in its final Clean Power Plan rule, coal would be reduced to providing 27 percent of U.S. electricity, with natural gas at 33 percent. Yet this very year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas will provide 34 percent of U.S. electricity, and coal 30 percent.

==

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-trump.html

no link

President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the E.P.A. itself.

Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the president-elect’s comments during the campaign. Mr. Trump has criticized the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate change, and attacked Mr. Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal.”

Mr. Pruitt has been in lock step with those views.

“Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” he wrote in National Review earlier this year. “That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”

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OPEN INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC

A meeting on Monday between the president-elect and former Vice President Al Gore may have given environmental activists a glimmer of hope that Mr. Trump was moderating his campaign stance. Mr. Trump told New York Times editors and reporters that he does “think there is some connectivity” between human activity and a warming planet.

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graphic

A Letter From Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Written Almost Entirely by Energy Company Officials DEC. 6, 2014

With the choice of Mr. Pruitt, that hope will have faded.

“During the campaign, Mr. Trump regularly threatened to dismantle the E.P.A. and roll back many of the gains made to reduce Americans’ exposures to industrial pollution, and with Pruitt, the president-elect would make good on those threats,” said Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research and advocacy organization.

“It’s a safe assumption that Pruitt could be the most hostile E.P.A. administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history,” he added.

Mr. Pruitt, 48, is a hero to conservative activists, one of a group of Republican attorneys general who formed an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda. Fossil fuel interests greeted Mr. Trump’s selection with elation.

“Attorney General Scott Pruitt has long been a defender of states’ rights and a vocal opponent of the current administration’s overreaching E.P.A.,” said Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which works on behalf of the coal industry. “Mr. Pruitt will be a significant voice of reason when it comes to energy and environmental regulations.”

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At the heart of Mr. Obama’s efforts to tackle climate change are a collection of E.P.A. regulations aimed at forcing power plants to significantly reduce their emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution. Mr. Trump cannot unilaterally cancel the rules, which were released under the 1970 Clean Air Act. But a legally experienced E.P.A. chief could substantially weaken, delay or slowly take them apart.

Beyond climate change, the E.P.A. itself may be endangered. Mr. Trump campaigned on a pledge to greatly shrink — or even dismantle — it. “We are going to get rid of it in almost every form,” he once pledged.

Mr. Pruitt may be the right man to do that. As attorney general, Mr. Pruitt created a“federalism unit” in his office, explicitly designed to fight President Obama’s health care law and environmental regulations.

“You could see from him an increasing effort to delegate environmental regulations away from the federal government and towards the states,” said Ronald Keith Gaddie, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma.

Although Mr. Obama’s climate rules were not completed until 2015, Mr. Pruitt and a handful of other attorneys general began planning as early as 2014 for a coordinated legal effort to fight them. That resulted in a 28-state lawsuit against the administration’s rules. A decision on the case is pending in a federal court, but it is widely expected to advance to the Supreme Court.

As Mr. Pruitt has sought to use legal tools to fight environmental regulations on the oil and gas companies that are a major part of his state’s economy, he has also worked with those companies. A 2014 investigation by The Times found that energy lobbyists drafted letters for Mr. Pruitt to send, on state stationery, to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, outlining the economic hardship of the environmental rules.

The close ties have paid off for Mr. Pruitt politically: Harold G. Hamm, the chief executive of Continental Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company, was a co-chairman of Mr. Pruitt’s 2013 re-election campaign.

Mr. Pruitt, who grew up in Kentucky, moved to Oklahoma to go to law school. An avid baseball fan, for eight years he co-owned and managed the Oklahoma City Redhawks, a minor league team. He won a seat in the Oklahoma Legislature and opened a small legal office, which he called Christian Legal Services, to challenge government actions that he saw as compromising individual rights.

As he ran for attorney general of Oklahoma in 2010, he made clear that he intended to use his power as the state’s top law enforcement official to attempt to force the E.P.A. to back down, convinced that it was wrongly stepping on state government powers.

“There’s a mentality emanating from Washington today that says, ‘We know best.’ It’s a one-size-fits-all strategy, a command-and-control kind of approach, and we’ve got to make sure we know how to respond to that,” Mr. Pruitt was quoted as saying during his election campaign in 2010

But that campaign, once Mr. Pruitt was sworn in, quickly became an opportunity to work secretly with some of the largest oil and gas companies, and the state’s coal-burning electric utility, to try to overturn a large part of the Obama administration’s regulations on air emissions, water pollution and endangered animals, documents obtained by The Times show.

As attorney general, Mr. Pruitt took the unusual step of jointly filing an antiregulatory lawsuit with industry players, such as Oklahoma Gas and Electric, the coal-burning electric utility, and the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by major oil and gas executives, including Mr. Hamm.

Behind the scenes, he was taking campaign contributions from many of the industry players on his team, or helping deliver even larger sums of money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he became the chairman of.

Mr. Pruitt’s office also began to send letters to federal regulators — including the E.P.A. and even President Obama — that documents obtained through open records requests show were written by energy industry lobbyists from companies including Devon Energy. Mr. Pruitt’s staff put these ghostwritten letters on state government stationery and then sent them to Washington, moves that the companies often then praised in their own news releases, without noting that they had actually drafted the letters in the first place.

Mr. Pruitt understood that he was being painted as a tool of industry, but in interviews and his own writing, he rejected that analysis, saying that he at times formed alliances with private sector players that shared his views — and was determined to help the energy industry and individual citizens in his home state.

“It is the job of the attorney general to defend the interests and well-being of the citizens and state of Oklahoma,” Mr. Pruitt’s office said in a statement in 2014 to The Times. “This includes protecting Oklahoma’s economy from the perilous effects of federal overreach by agencies like the E.P.A. The energy sector is a major driver of the Oklahoma economy.”

Mr. Pruitt repeatedly explained that he thought states themselves were in the best position to regulate local industries, be it oil and gas companies, or other players that might affect the local environment, such as Devon Energy, which has been a contributor to his political causes, and which he has helped push back against federal regulations.

With so much at stake, Mr. Pruitt’s confirmation hearings promise to be heated.

“At a time when climate change is the great environmental threat to the entire planet, it is sad and dangerous that Mr. Trump has nominated Scott Pruitt to lead the E.P.A.,” saidSenator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who sits on the committee that must confirm him. “The American people must demand leaders who are willing to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels. I will vigorously oppose this nomination.”

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/12/8/the_end_of_the_epa_trump

==

RS

...

In 2015, the Humane Society sued Pruitt for what it called a "nearly yearlong campaign of political harassment and public vilification" against the group.

• Oklahoma's Pruitt, soon to take responsibility for executing US environmental policy, is also quite a piece of work. The EPA is already under heavy criticism for weak regulation of pollution from the very kind of large-scale, concentrated livestock favored by Branstad and his patron Rastetter in Iowa. Like Iowa, Oklahoma has a heavy concentration of large-scale, confined animal operations—see Food and Water Watch's "Factory Farm Map" for the state. Pruitt, too, enjoys strong support from his state's agriculture interests, and has thundered against EPA farm regulations.

To be fair, Pruitt is hostile to the EPA in its entirety, not just in its capacity as a watchdog of farm pollution. On his LinkedIn page, Pruitt boasts that he's a "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." But while his ties to the fossil fuel industry are well known, his chumminess with his state's ag interests are also worth noting. This year, he hotly supported State Question 777,  informally known as a "right to farm" law, which would have restricted efforts by the state or localities to regulate farms—a blatant attempt to protect large-scale operations. The initiatives's supporters, led by the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. and the Oklahoma Pork Council, spent about $1 million promoting it. Opponents, led by the Humane Society of the US, also spent around $1 million.

Oklahoma voters shot down the measure by a 60-40 margin, but it didn't lose for lack of effort by Pruitt. Back in 2014, Pruitt launched an investigation of of the Humane Society, which was organizing opposition to the Right to Farm proposal. In 2015, HSUS hit back, suing Pruitt for what it called a "nearly yearlong campaign of political harassment and public vilification" against the animal welfare group. HSUS ultimately dropped the suit after the attorney general's office announced it was no longer investigating HSUS.

Meanwhile, Pruitt's relations with meat industry interests flourished. In August 2015, the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association honored him with its Distinguished Service Award, given to "individuals who have contributed to the success of the OCA and the Oklahoma beef cattle industry."

And just last month, days before the presidential election, he keynoted the Oklahoma Farm Bureau's annual convention. In his speech, he lambasted EPA overreach, complaining that the agency is "affecting farmers and ranchers, it's affecting oil and gas."

About that: Farmers and ranchers are indeed suffering—but government overreach is the least of their problems.

==

==

busted for devon ltr

http://kfor.com/2014/12/08/i-was-stunned-ny-times-article-blasts-oklahoma-attorney-general-accuses-him-of-secret-alliance/

no link

OKLAHOMA CITY - A New York Times article published over the weekend accuses Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt of having a secret alliance with energy firms, like Devon Energy.

The article is titled "Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance with Attorneys General."

Pruitt is prominently featured in the picture right under the title and a large part of the article is dedicated to his relationship with Devon Energy.

Through open records requests, the New York Times obtained a letter written by Devon's attorneys, which was then taken to Pruitt.

The article states "The attorney general's staff had taken Devon's draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general's signature."

Click here to read the full article from The New York Times.

"I was stunned. It was a breathtaking breach of ethics as far as I was concerned, a real black eye for Oklahoma," said Arnold Hamilton, editor of the Oklahoma Observer, a monthly political publication that's been around for almost 50 years.

"He's supposed to be the people's lawyer. He's supposed to be a voice for the people, an independent voice. And instead, he comes across very much looking like a toadie for big money financial groups," said Hamilton.

The gist of the letter to the Environmental Protection Agency was that federal regulators were overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling natural gas wells in Oklahoma.

Hamilton says if Pruitt believes that, he should've drafted his own letter.

"It is unusual for them, for somebody in the attorney general's position, to allow an outside, well-heeled, influence groups like that to write your letters for you," said Hamilton.

We sent repeated requests to Pruitt's office to respond to the cut and paste treatment of the Devon document, but they only sent a lengthy response focusing on the benefits of the energy industry.

The statement released by his office is as follows:

"The article did not accurately reflect what motivates my service and how we seek to make decisions on advancing these cases. Our responsibility is to protect Oklahoma’s interest when any federal agency seeks to displace the authority granted to the state under federal law. This administration has given us plenty of opportunity to litigate those matters in regards to energy, the environment, and health care and that is what is driving us, nothing more or nothing less."

“It should come as no surprise that I am working diligently with Oklahoma energy companies, the people of Oklahoma and the majority of attorneys general to fight the unlawful overreach of the EPA and other federal agencies. This administration’s effort to impose anti-fossil fuel policies are short-sighted, and unconstitutional and I will continue to fight the administration’s unconstitutional maneuvers at every step of the way. Oklahomans understand and appreciate the impact energy companies have on our state. The energy industry provides thousands of good-paying jobs and counts for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that support education, public safety and roads and bridges in our state. The rules and regulations imposed unlawfully and inconsistently by the EPA have real-world implications for the citizens and state of Oklahoma. The EPA’s decision on Regional Haze, for instance, will cause the utility rates of Oklahomans to increase more than 20 percent all while only resulting in a miniscule improvement in air visibility. Others outside Oklahoma may not realize this important fact, but the administration’s unprecedented moves to target energy companies will cost jobs, raise utility rates and are a major obstacle standing in the way of American energy independence.” – AG Scott Pruitt

Devon Energy sent us the following statement:

"Our engagement with attorneys general is consistent - and proportionate - with our commitment to engage in conversations with policymakers on a broad range of matters that promote jobs, economic growth and a robust domestic energy sector.

It is important and practical for states to resolve legal questions related to jurisdictional conflicts with the federal government, and these matters can only be resolved in federal courts. Oil and natural gas production is a state-regulated industry, and we have an obligation and a right to seek clarity and solutions when our interests are being harmed.

We often serve as a resource with useful information and expertise for decision-makers.

We have a clear obligation to our shareholders and others to be involved in these discussions related to job growth, economic growth and domestic energy. It is important that we give full consideration to policymaker requests for information and expertise on industry issues. And it would be indefensible for us to not be engaged in these important issues."

==

watchdogorg916

Grayson Quay | Watchdog Arena

Several states have voiced their opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s sweeping Clean Power Plan, but none has been so resolute in its defiance as Oklahoma, which has continually challenged the plan through executive and judicial means.

The Clean Power Plan, which is the first nationwide regulation of existing power plants, has not taken effect yet, but it has already inspired vastly different responses from various states.

The plan sets goals for each state and then leaves it to the state to devise a plan, which must be approved by the EPA, to achieve those goals. If a state refuses to devise a State Implementation Plan, the federal government will impose one.

“One state may opt to phase out older coal-burning power plants, while another might seek to expand the use of solar and wind energy. Or a state might add new energy-efficiency programs to cut electricity consumption,” a recent Washington Post article suggested.

The plan, which will likely be finalized within a few weeks, seeks a 30 percent reduction in national carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 2030, but could hit Oklahoma even harder.Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, has predicted the plan could force Oklahoma to cut emissions by 33 percent by 2020 and 36 percent by 2030.

Many Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell chief among them, have expressed skepticism about the EPA’s promise of relative independence for the states.

“(I)t’s difficult to conceive how a plan imposed from Washington would be much different from what a state might develop on its own. Since the Obama administration has already decreed that it will be the judge of whether a plan is acceptable or not, it’s hard to see the White House agreeing to much that diverges from its ideological agenda,” McConnell wrote in March. In the same op-ed, McConnell encouraged governors to refuse to set up implementation plans.

Earlier this month, the U.S. News & World Report reported that six governors had taken up McConnell’s banner. But while Mike Pence of Indiana, Greg Abbott of Texas, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana have all threatened noncompliance, none have done so as emphatically as Mary Fallin of Oklahoma.

Gov. Fallin signed an executive order in April in which she accuses the EPA of seeking to “go beyond” regulating power plant emissions to “regulate all aspects of state energy systems.”

Oklahoma has shown its willingness to develop clean energy, with over 12 percent of the state’s electricity generated by wind power, but the administration fears excessive federal control over the state’s energy economy.

Citing the difficulty and expense of setting up an implementation plan, Fallin’s order serves to “prohibit the (Oklahoma) Department of Energy Quality from beginning efforts to develop a SIP… in response to the finalization of the Clean Power Plan rules” unless she orders them to do so.

On May 1, Fallin vetoed a bill that would have required the state to develop an implementation plan subject to approval by the state’s attorney general.

The executive order also claims that the plan contains “numerous possible legal defects, each of which may provide an independent basis to invalidate the Clean Power Plan in its entirety.”

McConnell concurred in his op-ed, writing that the plan is “probably illegal.”

Attorney General Pruitt has been at the forefront of the legal battle against the Clean Power Plan, although so far the fight is not going well. After six different legal challenges to the plan by a variety of states and private-sector energy companies were tossed out of court, the Natural Resources Defense Council declared “polluters and their allies are now batting 0 for 6.”

The cases were dismissed either due to a lack of jurisdiction, or because the courts only have the power to review actual federal regulations, not proposals. In a recently dismissed lawsuit brought by 14 states, including Oklahoma, the states argued the proposed plan was already negatively affecting them, The Hill reported. The states recently appealed for a rehearing.

“Waiting until the rule is finalized before a court can rule on its lawfulness will force states like Oklahoma into making policy decisions on power generation and distribution that will be irreversible,” Pruitt said, explaining that to ensure compliance, the state would have to begin efforts to reduce emissions before the plan is finalized.

Pruitt also filed a separate lawsuit of his own in Tulsa last week, which was thrown out for lack of jurisdiction, and has since tried to appeal his case to a federal appeals court in Denver.

Last year, the New York Times reported on a “secretive alliance” between Pruitt and large energy companies, showing that Pruitt routinely signed his name to letters from energy lobbyists and passed them on to policymakers with minimal revision. Pruitt’s office responded that he was merely consulting experts to better understand the effects of federal regulation. “It is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant,” the statement read.

In addition to questioning its legality, many opponents of the Clean Power Plan also fear its economic consequences. “While the environmental benefits of these regulations will be minimal, the economic devastation of these overreaching and unrealistic regulations will be very real,” Fallin said.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association has predicted that the plan could cause a 10 percent jump in electricity prices, which could drain $2.8 trillion from the national GDP from 2020 to 2040 and kill 2.1 million jobs in 2021 alone.

Proponents of the plan argue that the nation cannot afford not to implement it. The EPA has claimed the plan will produce $7 in health benefits for every dollar it costs, while the Economist recently warned of the potentially disastrous economic consequences of climate change.

This article was written by a contributor of Watchdog Arena, Franklin Center’s network of writers, bloggers, and citizen journalists.

==

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?_r=1

2x?

The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”

The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.

They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority — 27 — of attorneys general’s offices.

The Times reported previously how individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more corporate-friendly settlement terms after intervention by lobbyists and lawyers, many of whom are also campaign benefactors.

But the attorneys general are also working collectively. Democrats for more than a decade have teamed up with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to use the court system to impose stricter regulation. But never before have attorneys general joined on this scale with corporate interests to challenge Washington and file lawsuits in federal court.

Courting Favor

Articles in this series examine the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide.

Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations, according to a review of thousands of emails and court documents and dozens of interviews.

“When you use a public office, pretty shamelessly, to vouch for a private party with substantial financial interest without the disclosure of the true authorship, that is a dangerous practice,” said David B. Frohnmayer, a Republican who served a decade as attorney general in Oregon. “The puppeteer behind the stage is pulling strings, and you can’t see. I don’t like that. And when it is exposed, it makes you feel used.”

For Mr. Pruitt, the benefits have been clear. Lobbyists and company officials have been notably solicitous, helping him raise his profile as president for two years of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a post he used to help start what he and allies called theRule of Law campaign, which was intended to push back against Washington.

That campaign, in which attorneys general band together to operate like a large national law firm, has been used to back lawsuits and other challenges against the Obama administration on environmental issues, the Affordable Care Act and securities regulation. The most recent target is the president’s executive action on immigration.

“We are living in the midst of a constitutional crisis,” Mr. Pruitt told energy industry lobbyists and conservative state legislators at a conference in Dallas in July, after being welcomed with a standing ovation. “The trajectory of our nation is at risk and at stake as we respond to what is going on.”

Mr. Pruitt has responded aggressively, and with a lot of helping hands. Energy industry lobbyists drafted lettersfor him to send to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, The Times found.

Industries that he regulates have also joined him as plaintiffs in court challenges, a departure from the usual role of the state attorney general, who traditionally sues companies to force compliance with state law.

Energy industry lobbyists have also distributed draft legislation to attorneys general and asked them to help push it through state legislatures to give the attorneys general clearer authority to challenge the Obama regulatory agenda, the documents show....

==

Attorney Generals: The Climate Change-Gang

The Obama administration lawlessly rewards its supporters and punishes its enemies.

The United States was born out of a revolution against, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an “arbitrary government” that put men on trial “for pretended offences” and “abolish[ed] the Free System of English laws.” Brave men and women stood up to that oppressive government, and this, the greatest democracy of them all, one that is governed by the rule of law and not by men, is the product.

Some of our states have forgotten this founding principle and are acting less like Jefferson and Adams and more like George III. A group of Democratic attorneys general has announced it intends to criminally investigate oil and gas companies that have disputed the science behind man-made global warming. Backed by green-energy interests and environmentalist lobbying groups, the coalition has promised to use intrusive investigations, costly litigation, and criminal prosecutions to silence critics of its climate-change agenda. Pretended offenses, indeed.

We won’t be joining this coalition, and we hope that those attorneys general who have joined will disavow it. Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime. The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress. No bills were debated, no votes were taken.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this tactic of advancing the climate-change agenda by any means necessary. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is a particularly noteworthy example. This EPA regulation, one of the most ambitious ever proposed, will shutter coal-fired power plants, significantly increase the price of electricity for American consumers, and enact by executive fiat the very same cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions that Congress has rejected.

The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress. No bills were debated, no votes were taken, and the representatives of the American people had no opportunity to object or offer their own suggestions. The checks and balances built into our system of government were simply ignored as inconvenient impediments to the president’s agenda.

But in our states, we believe in and govern with respect for the rule of law, rather than by ambition to use the power of our governments to stifle political opponents. That is why we are part of a very different kind of coalition, a coalition of 29 states seeking to vindicate the rule of law by challenging the legality of the Clean Power Plan in our courts. The 29 states and state attorneys general who are part of this effort respect our proper role, which is neither topick winners and losers in the energy sector nor to silence those with whom we disagree. Rather, our job is to hold the EPA accountable to the laws that created it and to fulfill our statutory duties to ensure that consumers in our states have access to reliable, affordable energy. We will continue to pursue those goals and to present our arguments in the courts and in the public square, treating our opponents with the respect they deserve.

It’s unfortunate that this respect is not always returned. In their press conference, the group of state attorneys general called themselves an “unprecedented coalition.” On this point, they are correct. Rarely in our nation’s history has the police power of the state been so eagerly used to intimidate citizens into silence. But even more troubling are internal e-mails and other documents that indicate that this coercion was orchestrated not by the attorneys general themselves, but by green-energy advocacy groups using these officials as puppets to further their extreme agendas. This should frighten us all. Outside groups should not be able to use the power of the government as a sword to go after their political opponents.

We do not doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of our fellow attorneys general about climate change and the role human activity plays in it. But we call upon them to press those beliefs through debate, not through governmental intimidation of those who disagree with them. Few things could be more un-American.

— Scott Pruitt is the attorney general of Oklahoma. Luther Strange is the attorney general of Alabama.

==

https://ballotpedia.org/Scott_Pruitt

Scott Pruitt (born May 9, 1968, in Danville, Kentucky) is the 17th and current Attorney General of **Oklahoma**. Only the second Republican to hold the seat, he has served in this position since January 2011. Pruitt easily won election on November 2**, 2010**, defeating Democrat Jim Priest by a margin of 65.1 percent to 34.9 percent.[1] The seat was open following Drew Edmondson's decision not to seek re-election.[2]

Campaigning on a platform of restoring limited government and the balance of power between state and federal government, Pruitt has opposed what he saw as the overreach of the federal government. Upon taking office he established Oklahoma's first Federalism Unit in the Office of Solicitor General with the goal of combating "unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach by federal agencies, boards and offices."[3]

Pruitt was elected as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association in 2012, and re-elected for a second term in February 2013.[4]

Prior to becoming the state's top attorney, Pruitt was a member of the State Senate from 1998-2006. He served for four years as Assistant Republican Floor Leader. While serving in that body, his major issues included greater accountability for government spending and faith-based legislation.[3]

Pruitt ran without opposition for re-election as Oklahoma Attorney General in 2014.[5]

Biography

Pruitt grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. He earned a baseball scholarship to University of Kentucky and finished his bachelor's degree in communications and political science at Georgetown College. Shortly after receiving his law degree from the University of Tulsa, Pruitt joined a Tulsa-based private practice law firm where he specialized in constitutional law, contracts, insurance law, labor law and litigation & appeals. In 2004, he became the general managing partner for Oklahoma City's Triple-A baseball team, the Oklahoma Red Hawks.[6]

Education

Political career

Having served five years in the private sector, Pruitt chose to enter the Oklahoma political stage in 1998 when he was elected to the State Senate, representing Tulsa and Wagoner Counties. After two years, he was selected by his peers to serve as the Republican Whip from 2001 to 2003 before being named theRepublican Assistant Floor Leader, a position he held until he left the state legislature in 2006.

Oklahoma Attorney General (2011-present)

Issues

Healthcare reform

See also: State Attorneys General Against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010

Though his predecessor, Democrat Drew Edmondson, gave up on litigation against the federal health care measures, incoming Republican State Attorney General Pruitt said he planned to move forward on the legal action as soon as he took office. However, as of December 2010, he had yet to decide "whether to take action here on Oklahoma or join one of the other suits against the law."[7]

Illegal immigration

Pruitt promised that if elected state attorney general he would "sue the federal government for all expenses his state incurs as a result of illegal immigration," including in jails, schools and medical facilities.[8] He believes that the expenses provide the federal government with an unfunded mandate and that each of the individual states must hold them accountable.

Controversies
Mortgage/Foreclosure abuse settlement

Pruitt was the only state attorney general who declined to sign off on the $25 billion settlement agreementbetween Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and GMAC and 49 other states over foreclosure abuses. Believing that the settlement's expansion into principle reduction and loan refinancing, beyond basic legal issues, "exceeded his authority as attorney general," Pruitt pursued a separate agreement with the same five mortgage lenders. The agreement awarded $18.6 million in relief to the state.

Pruitt has been critical of the federal government's banking policies; "I have a role to play as attorney general and that role is to enforce state law and compensate victims of lending abuses," not participate with other states in supporting President Obama's efforts to restructure the mortgage industry.[9]

Mandatory Ultrasound Bill

In June 2012, Pruitt appealed a Oklahoma County District ruling that House Bill 2780, which would have required any woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure and have it explained to her before the procedure, was unconstitutional. Three months prior to Pruitt's appeal to have that decision invalidated, Judge Bryan C. Dixon rebuffed the Republican-driven law on the grounds that it "improperly is addressed only to patients, physicians and sonographers concerning abortions and does not address all patients, physicians and sonographers concerning other medical care where a general law could clearly be made applicable."[10]

Weeks before this appeal, Pruitt appealed another court's ruling against a different piece of abortion-related legislation, House Bill 1970, which sought to place restrictions on abortion-inducing drugs. Both judicial strike-downs resulted from challenges brought by an activist group dedicated to reproductive freedom, the Center for Reproductive Rights (joined by co-plaintiff The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice in the second case). In response to Pruitt's latter appeal, President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights said, "This administration's utter hostility toward women's reproductive rights evidently knows no bounds."

A spokeswoman from the attorney general's office defended the appeal, citing the value of abortion ultrasound statute as a vehicle for medical education and information. The statement echoed the language of Pruitt's June 20 filing, in which he claimed the court's decision to overturn the statute stemmed from a false interpretation of the Oklahoma Constitution: "The trial court - in error - ruled that the Oklahoma Constitution forbids legislation ensuring women receive meaningful medical information obtained through ultrasounds that the clinics are currently requiring."[10]

Oklahoma State Senate (1998-2006)

Pruitt served in the Oklahoma State Senate from 1998 to 2006.

Elections

2014

See also: Oklahoma attorney general election, 2014

Pruitt ran for re-election without opposition as Oklahoma Attorney General in 2014. He formally announced on July 29, 2013 that he would seek re-election, with energy executive Harold Hamm serving as his campaign chairman.[5]

Pruitt won the Republican primary on June 24 without opposition and faced no opponent in the general election. Scott Pruitt won the general election on November 4, 2014, without opposition.

2010

See also: Oklahoma Attorney General election, 2010

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OMG

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/07/us/politics/documents-attorneys-general-and-the-energy-industry.html

Oklahoma, Joining With Self-Interested Co-Plaintiffs

Mr. Pruitt has filed a long list of lawsuits — including some filed jointly with private sector players — to challenge the Obama's administration regulatory agenda, including the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank law on financial rules, and regulations issued or proposed by the Interior Department or the Environmental Protection Agency.

KEY DOCUMENTS

Mr. Pruitt filed a lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014, arguing that the federal government had improperly expanded its oversight of threats to certain animal species. He was joined in the suit by the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, a nonprofit run by oil and gas companies that had been looking for a powerful partner in its effort to curb new wildlife restrictions.

Mr. Pruitt teamed up with private sector players, including Oklahoma Gas & Electric, to challenge Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-burning power plants. Just days before one appeal, about 45 OG&E employees, including the president and chief executive of the company, wrote checks to Mr. Pruitt to help with his re-election campaign. A total of $17,825 was raised from company employees on this one day.

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KEY DOCUMENTS

An examination of the letters shows in some cases that Mr. Pruitt took them, signed them and simply sent them along, making almost no changes. In one letter, only 37 words of more than 1,000 were modified.

Devon Energy is a major financial supporter of the association — which Mr. Pruitt took over in 2012 — donating $125,000 this year. In one email exchange, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff wrote to the head of lobbying at Devon to ask for help in getting the American Petroleum Institute to join the association.

Email exchanges between Devon and Mr. Pruitt, as well as representatives from the Republican Governors Association, show how the company turned to Republican attorneys general and governors for help in trying to block a proposed Bureau of Land Management fracking regulation. The pitch has been successful so far, as the implementation of the rule has been repeatedly delayed.

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/oklahoma-sues-epa-calling-clean-air-rule-unconstitutional

Oklahoma sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, claiming it exceeded its powers by proposing new rules to reduce pollution at coal-fired power plants.

Attorney General Scott Pruittsued the EPA in Federal Court, claiming its plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the next five years is unconstitutional.

Oklahoma claims the agency's timeline for its Clean Power Plan is unrealistic, and that it will need a minimum of eight years to implement the changes.

[clean pwr plan video 101]

RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama's EPA Limits on Air Pollution

"In sum, due to the EPA Power Plan, simply maintaining electric service across the State of Oklahoma requires substantial expenditures of time, effort, and money by the Oklahoma Legislature, OCC [Oklahoma Corporation Commission], ODEQ [Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality], and other state actors, as well as private utilities," the complaint states.

"These expenditures cannot be recouped. If the State does nothing while EPA implements anything like a 35.5-percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions from Oklahoma's coal-fired power plants, the lights will go out in many Oklahoma communities, impacting State governmental operations, as well as the health and welfare of citizens. The same is true of the 33 percent 'interim goal' set by EPA and would be true of even a substantially smaller goal, on the order of 15 or 20 percent."

Pruitt claims that the plan would require "the complete restructuring of Oklahoma's power sector even though it has no chance of surviving eventual judicial scrutiny."

RELATED: GOP Congressman Lamar Smith Declares War on NASA and EPA Climate Science Research

He claims the plan violates at least three statutory bars and two constitutional limitations on federal power. Pruitt said the state can challenge the plan in the D.C. Circuit under Section 307 of the Clean Air Act, but expects it would take at least nine months for a final decision to be issued.

"Even if Oklahoma is able to obtain a stay of the EPA Power Plan in the D.C. Circuit, that is still likely to take months," according to the 19-page complaint. "By that time, Oklahoma will have either implemented or taken irreversible steps towards implementing most, if not all, of the changes described above, meaning that they will be implemented even though the EPA Power Plan is certain to be invalidated. The ordinary petition process under Section 307 is not an adequate means of obtaining the relief required if Oklahoma is to maintain its power sector in anything like the form it exists today and if it is to forgo the massive expenditure of resources required to accommodate the EPA Power Plan."

Federal officials could not be reached for comment after business hours Wednesday.

RELATED: EPA Moves to Regulate Airplane Emissions Under Clean Air Act, Citing Danger to Human Health

Pruitt said in a statement late Wednesday that the plan "forces Oklahoma intofundamentally restructuring the generation, transmission, and regulation of electricity" in a way that threatens the "reliability and affordability" of electricity in the state. He said that decisions on power generation and emissions reductions are best made at the local level.

"The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan," Pruitt said. "The EPA is ignoring the authority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats' authority over states' energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity."

Pruitt seeks declaratory judgment that the EPA Power Plan violates the Clean Air Act and "exceeds Congress's Article I authority and violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." He seeks an injunction preventing its enforcement.

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/:{2014:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:/12/07/3600475/investigation-energy-firms-attorneys-general-fighting-federal-government/

Energy firms and state attorneys general have established a secretive alliance in an effort to derail environmental oversight and promote fossil fuels, according to an in-depth New York Times’ investigation published this weekend. Having reviewed thousands of emails and legal documents and undertaken dozens of interviews, theTimes found that “Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda.”

Using Oklahoma as an example, open-records requests revealed that Attorney General Scott Pruitt delivered a letter to the EPA in 2011 accusing the agency of significantly overestimating the air pollution caused by fracking. Pruitt did not mention that the letter was originally written by representatives of Devon Energy, one of the state’s largest oil and gas companies.

“The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature,” reports the Times.

Devon Energy is a major supporter of the Republican Attorneys General Association, whose mission is electing Republicans to the Office of Attorney General. The company has donated significantly to the campaigns of climate deniers, giving $800,000 to former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign in 2013. Devon Energy also gave over a million dollars to the lobbying effort in support of the Keystone XL pipeline in 2012. Pruitt is head of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which has collected $16 million this year — nearly four times the amount it collected in 2010.

According to the Times, at least a dozen states now have attorneys general working with “energy companies and other corporate interests” that are in exchange providing them with unheard of amounts of political funds. This impact of this effort can be seen in this year’s election results, as Republicans will hold 27 state attorney’s general offices starting in January — the first time they’ve had a majority in recent history.

The Times reports that Devon Energy “readily turned to Mr. Pruitt and his staff for help” as part of a broader national effort bringing together powerful energy interests and attorneys general. The establishment of a new Federalism in Environmental Policy task force by the offices of 19 state attorneys general has bolstered attempts to push back on federal actions to reduce ozone pollution, protect endangered species, regulate fracking, and limit greenhouse gas emissions. The scale of this coordination with corporate interests is unprecedented.

Pruitt changed 37 words out of 1,016 when repurposing a letter drafted by Devon lawyers for submission to then head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, about the agency’s methane regulations. The Times published 80-plus pages of notes and documents showing the extent to which Devon and other energy companies have been working with state attorneys general to fight federal actions.

In responding to questions about his involvement with industry lobbyists, Pruitt said that “it is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant.” He went on to say that Devon Energy is an important energy producer and job creator for Oklahoma and that the overreach of the federal government into the regulation of fracking is not only bad for Devon, but also would negatively impact citizens of the state.

A recent study published in the journal Science found that nearly all of the more than 2,500 small earthquakes that have hit Oklahoma in the past five years can be linked to the process of drilling for oil and gas. Spills related to fracking have also threatenedwater supplies in the state.

In another recent display of the coordination between energy firms and state-level Republican politicians, this week the American Legislative Executive Council held their annual closed-door meeting in D.C. They pushed a number of anti-clean energy initiatives, including a resolution to abolish the EPA.

Tags:

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html

abbot pruitt epa clean air plan

1st time majority gop, backroom deals

12/14 lipton:

Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General

The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”

Courting Favor

Articles in this series examine the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide.

The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.

They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority — 27 — of attorneys general’s offices.

The Times reported previously how individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more corporate-friendly settlement terms after intervention by lobbyists and lawyers, many of whom are also campaign benefactors.

But the attorneys general are also working collectively. Democrats for more than a decade have teamed up with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to use the court system to impose stricter regulation. But never before have attorneys general joined on this scale with corporate interests to challenge Washington and file lawsuits in federal court.

Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations, according to a review of thousands of emails and court documents and dozens of interviews.

“When you use a public office, pretty shamelessly, to vouch for a private party with substantial financial interest without the disclosure of the true authorship, that is a dangerous practice,” said David B. Frohnmayer, a Republican who served a decade as attorney general in Oregon. “The puppeteer behind the stage is pulling strings, and you can’t see. I don’t like that. And when it is exposed, it makes you feel used.”

For Mr. Pruitt, the benefits have been clear. Lobbyists and company officials have been notably solicitous, helping him raise his profile as president for two years of the Republican Attorneys General Association,a post he used to help start what he and allies called the Rule of Law campaign, which was intended to push back against Washington.

That campaign, in which attorneys general band together to operate like a large national law firm, has been used to back lawsuits and other challenges against the Obama administration on environmental issues, the Affordable Care Act and securities regulation. The most recent target is the president’s executive action on immigration.

“We are living in the midst of a constitutional crisis,” Mr. Pruitt told energy industry lobbyists and conservative state legislators at a conference in Dallas in July, after being welcomed with a standing ovation. “The trajectory of our nation is at risk and at stake as we respond to what is going on.”

DOCUMENT

A Window Into a Secret Alliance: Attorneys General and the Energy Industry

The New York Times submitted open-records requests for correspondence between certain energy industry executives and attorneys general who are helping lead an effort they call the Rule of Law campaign to combat Obama administration regulations. Thousands of pages of correspondence emerged. Here is a sampling of the documents, showing how the regulated industries and their lobbyists have secretly worked with the attorneys general to combat Washington.

OPEN DOCUMENT

Mr. Pruitt has responded aggressively, and with a lot of helping hands. Energy industry lobbyists drafted letters for him to send to the E.P.A., the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget and even President Obama, The Times found.

Industries that he regulates have also joined him as plaintiffs in court challenges, a departure from the usual role of the state attorney general, who traditionally sues companies to force compliance with state law.

Energy industry lobbyists have also distributed draft legislation to attorneys general and asked them to help push it through state legislatures to give the attorneys general clearer authority to challenge the Obama regulatory agenda, the documents show.

“It is quite new,” said Paul Nolette, a political-science professor at Marquette University and the author of the forthcoming book “Federalism on Trial: State Attorneys General and National Policy Making in Contemporary America.” “The scope, size and tenor of these collaborations is, without question, unprecedented.”

And it is an emerging practice that several former attorneys general say threatens the integrity of the office.

“It is a magnificent and noble institution, the office of attorney general, as it is truly the lawyer for the people,” said Terry Goddard, a Democrat who served two terms as Arizona’s attorney general and who, like Mr. Frohnmayer, reviewed copies of the documents collected by The Times. “That independence is clearly at risk here. What is happening diminishes the reputation of individual attorneys general and the community as a group.”

Mr. Pruitt, who has emerged as a hero to conservative activists, dismissed this criticism as misinformed.

“Those kinds of questions arise from the environment we are in — a very dysfunctional, distrustful political environment,” Mr. Pruitt said in an interview. “I can say to you that is not who we are or have ever been, and despite those criticisms we sit around and make decisions about what is right, and what represents adherence to the rule of law, and we seek to advance that and try to do the best we can to educate people about our viewpoint.”

In a state dominated by the energy industry, Mr. Pruitt’s stands have been widely popular. “Attorney General Pruitt has been a champion for our state,” said State Senator Mike Schulz, a Republican who is the majority floor leader. “The State of Oklahoma is in a better position than the E.P.A. to regulate drilling.”

But Mr. Pruitt’s ties with industry are clear. One of his closest partners has been Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire chief executive of Continental Resources, which is among the biggest oil and gas drilling companies in both Oklahoma and North Dakota.

GRAPHIC

A Letter From Oklahoma’s Attorney General, Written Almost Entirely by Energy Company Officials

Devon Energy’s lawyers and lobbyists drafted letters and provided them to Attorney General Scott Pruitt to send to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and even President Obama directly. Most of those letters were signed by Mr. Pruitt and sent with few changes. Here is one example, obtained through open-records requests.

OPEN GRAPHIC

This year, Mr. Pruitt joined with a group aligned with Mr.Hammto sue the Interior Department over its plan to consider adding animals such as the lesser prairie chicken to the endangered species list, a move that Mr. Hamm has said could knock out “some of the most promising land for oil and gas leases in the country.” The suit was filed after Mr. Hamm announced that he would serve as the chairman of Mr. Pruitt’s re-election campaign.

“Time and time again, General Pruitt has stood up and bravely fought for the rights of Oklahomans in those instances when the federal government has overextended its hand,” Mr. Hamm said as his role in Mr. Pruitt’s re-election effort was announced.

A Potent Ally

Energy industry executives and lobbyists from across the United States saw great potential in Mr. Pruitt, a gifted politician who had been a state legislator and a minor-league baseball team co-owner and executive before running for attorney general.

Among them was Andrew P. Miller, a patrician 81-year-old former Virginia attorney general. Mr. Miller is a regular at gatherings of state attorneys general at resort destinations, and his client list includes TransCanada, the backer of the Keystone XLpipeline; theSouthern Company, the Georgia-based electric utility, which has a large number of coal-burning power plants; and the investor group behind the proposed Pebble Minein Alaska.

For the energy industry, Mr. Pruitt was an easy choice.

“There’s a mentality emanating from Washington today that says, ‘We know best,’ ” Mr. Pruitt said during his 2010 campaign. “It’s a one-size-fits-all strategy, a command-and-control kind of approach, and we’ve got to make sure we know how to respond to that.”

Among Mr. Pruitt’s first acts was to create a “federalism office,” which challenged the Obama administration’s plan to reduce haze in southwestern Oklahoma by requiring coal-burning electricity plants in the state to install new pollution control equipment.

His interaction with the industry, Mr. Pruitt said during an interview at his Oklahoma City office, has been motivated by a desire to gather information from experts, while defending his state’s longstanding tradition of self-determination.

That ethos, he said, is depicted in a large oil painting in his office that shows local authorities with rifles at the ready confronting outsiders during the land rush era. “The founders recognized that power concentrated in a few is a bad thing,” Mr. Pruitt said.

More of Nation’s Attorneys General Are Republican

Aided by record fund-raising by the Republican Attorneys General Association, Republicans, for the first time in modern history, will control a majority of state attorney general posts in 2015.

Party of incoming attorneys general by state, 2015

Money raised by attorney general associations

Number of attorneys general by party

CHART

Sources: Republican and Democratic Attorneys General Associations (fund-raising numbers); Paul Nolette, department of political science, Marquette University (attorneys general by party and state)

By Alicia Parlapiano

Mr. Miller made it his job to promote Mr. Pruitt nationally, both as a spokesman for the Rule of Law campaignand as the president of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

“I regard the general as the A.G. best suited to take this lead on this question of federalism,” Mr. Miller wrote to Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff in April 2012. “The touchstone of this initiative would be to organize the states to resist federal ‘overreach’ whenever it occurs.”

To Mr. Miller, having Mr. Pruitt as an advocate fit a broader strategy. He wanted state attorneys general to band together the way they did when theychallenged the health care law in 2010.In that effort, they hired a major national corporate law firm, Baker Hostetler, to argue the case, with much of the bill being paid through donations from executives at corporations that oppose the law.

In his initial appeal to Mr. Pruitt, Mr. Miller insisted that his approach was not “client driven.” But he soon began to name individual clients — TransCanada and Pebble Mine in Alaska — that he wanted to include in the effort. The E.P.A. has held up the Pebble Mine project, which could potentially yield 80 billion pounds of copper, after concluding it would “threaten one of the world’s most productive salmon fisheries.”

“This strike force ought to take the form of a national state litigation team to challenge the E.P.A.’s overreach,” Mr. Miller said in an email to Mr. Pruitt’s office. “Like the Dalmatian at the proverbial firehouse, it could move out smartly when the alarm sounded.”

A Call to Arms

Mr. Miller’s pitch to Mr. Pruittbecame a reality early last year at the historic Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City, where he brought together an extraordinary assembly of energy industry power brokers and attorneys general from nine states for what he called the Summit on Federalism and the Future of Fossil Fuels.

The meeting took place in the shadow of office towers that dominate Oklahoma City’s skyline and are home toContinental Resources, a leader in the nation’s fastest-growing oil field, the Bakken formation of North Dakota, as well as Devon Energy, which drilled 1,275 new wells last year.

More liberal attorneys general, such as Douglas F. Gansler, Democrat of Maryland, did not participate.

“Indeed, General Gansler would in all likelihood try to hijack your summit,” Mr. Miller wrote to Mr. Pruitt in an email. “At best you would be left to preside over a debate, rather than a call to arms.”

Top Individual Recipients of Energy Industry Money Since 2004

Many attorneys general collect contributions directly from energy industry donors, in addition to money passed on from party associations. Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma, for example, has received at least $215,574 from companies and industry employees since 2010, even though he ran unopposed in his most recent election.

Attorney generals highlighted in gray

will be in office in 2015

ATTORNEY

GENERAL

ELECTION

YEARS

PARTY

STATE

CONTRIBUTIONS

Greg Abbott

R

Tex.

$2,459,204

2006, 2010

Tom Corbett

R

Pa.

577,192

2004, 2008

Ken Paxton

R

Tex.

488,411

2014

R

Mike DeWine

Ohio

321,033

2010, 2014

Luther Strange

Ala.

279,200

R

2010, 2014

Gary K. King

D

N.M.

228,018

2006, 2010

Scott Pruitt

R

Okla.

215,574

2010, 2014

Chris Koster

D

Mo.

202,419

2008, 2012

Bill Schuette

R

Mich.

190,516

2010, 2014

R

Kenneth T.

Cuccinelli II

Va.

174,638

2009

Notes: 2014 data is incomplete. Scott Pruitt was unopposed in 2014.

Source: National Institute on Money in State Politics (energy industry contributions)

By Alicia Parlapiano

Oklahoma energy companies were there, according to an agenda, joined by executives from Peabody Energy of Missouri, the world’s largest private-sector coal producer, as well as the SouthernCompany, which has aggressively challenged federal air pollution mandates.

The nation’s top corporate energy regulatory lawyers were there, too, includingF. William Brownell,a senior partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams, which has spent more than 25 years fighting the enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

The event was organized by an energy-industry-funded law and economics center at George Mason University of Virginia. The center is part of the brain trust of conservative, pro-industry groups that have worked from the sidelines to help Mr. Pruitt and other attorneys general.

And there was nothing ambiguous about the agenda.

“Suggested Responses to Assaults on Federalism” was the topic of one breakfast meeting, moderated by Attorney General Wayne K. Stenehjem of North Dakota, that showcased Mr. Brownell and three other top corporate regulatory lawyers. Mr. Hamm was the featured dinner speaker.

“We need to ensure the robust role of the states,” said Paul M. Seby, another coal industry lawyer who attended. “And as the chief law enforcement officers, it is not surprising this is becoming a cornerstone of attorney generals’ attention.”

Attorneys general said they had no choice but to team up with corporate America. “When the federal government oversteps its legal authority and takes actions that hurt our businesses and residents, it’s entirely appropriate for us to partner with the adversely affected private entities in fighting back,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida, whose top deputy attended the meeting.

A ‘Strike Force’

The impact of the gathering was immediate. A week later, a new Federalism in Environmental Policy task force was established by lawyers in the offices of 19 state attorneys general, according to email records obtained from the office of Attorney General Timothy C. Fox of Montana, who had participated in the Oklahoma meeting.

“This message is in follow-up to the excellent environmental conference put on last week by George Mason University and hosted by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office,” said one email sent byKatie Spohn, the deputy attorney general in Nebraska. “In order to continue our coordination of efforts regarding Federalism in Environmental Policy, I am seeking input from each state who participated in the conference.”

PATRICK MORRISEY The West Virginia attorney general got a draft bill from a coal industry lawyer.

Mr. Miller was pleased. “Just the kind of strike force I was talking about,” he said in an interview.

And the input poured forth. The states worked to detail major federal environmental action, like efforts to curb fish kills, reduce ozonepollution, slow climate change and tighten regulation of coal ash. Then they identified which attorney general’s office was best positioned to try to monitor it and, if necessary, attempt to block it.

Follow-up by Mr. Pruitt’s federalism office often came after coordination with industry representatives, especially from Devon Energy. The company, one of the most important financial supporters for the Republican Attorneys General Association, is guarded about its public profile. But it readily turned to Mr. Pruitt and his staff for help, setting up meetings for the attorney general with its chief executive, its chief lobbyist and other important players.

“We have a clear obligation to our shareholders and others to be involved in these discussions,” John Porretto, a Devon spokesman, said in a statement.

While some of the exchanges were general in character, others were quite explicit, especially the communication about the E.P.A.’s methane regulations that had prompted Mr. Whitsitt, the Devon official, to propose that Mr. Pruitt send a letter to the agency.

“Just a note to pass along the electronic version of the draft letter to Lisa Jackson at E.P.A.,” said one September 2011 letter to Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff from Mr. Whitsitt. “We have no pride of authorship, so whatever you do on this is fine.”

Mr. Pruitt took the letter and, after changing just 37 words in the 1,016-word draft, copied it onto his state government letterhead and sent it to Ms. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator.

That was just one of his challenges to Washington.Devon officials also turned to Mr. Pruitt to enlist other Republican attorneys general and Republican governors to oppose a rule proposed by the Bureau of Land Management that would regulate hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on federal land.

“As promised, we are sending you the attached draft of the R.G.A./RAGA follow-up letter to President Obama opposing B.L.M.’s proposed rule,” Brent Rockwood, Devon’s director of government affairs, wrote to Mr. Pruitt’s staff in late 2012, in an email marked “confidential.”

Weeks later, that letter was sent to Mr. Obama without only a few word changes, signed by Mr. Pruitt and Gov. BobbyJindalof Louisiana, who was the head of the Republican Governors Associationat the time.

ANDREW P. MILLER A version of the lobbyist’s bill was approved by the West Virginia Legislature.

Company officials again expressed their pleasure to Mr. Pruitt.

“I’ve learned that we’re having an effect — and may be able to have more, perhaps even to having the rule withdrawn or shifted to almost a reporting-only one,” Mr. Whitsitt wrote, in another email marked “confidential.”

The rule — which the industry claims would cost $346 million a year to comply with — has still not been issued.

Coordination between the corporations and teams of attorneys general involved in the Rule of Law effort also involves actual litigation to try to clear roadblocks to energy projects, documents show.

Energy producers, for instance, wanted to sue the Interior Department as it considered adding animals such as the sage grouse — which nests near sites of oil and gas drilling — to a list of endangered species, a move that could put tens of thousands of acres off limits to new drilling.

The energy companies could have sued on their own, but their executives believed that the case would be more potent by bringing in Mr. Pruitt and the weight of the State of Oklahoma.

“We just came to the conclusion he would be the best person to be the lead attorney on this,” said Mike McDonald, an owner of Triad Energy, a small oil and gas exploration company, and the president of a group that calls itself the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance. “He has exceeded our expectations.”

For the industry, the state is an extremely valued partner because states are granted “special solicitude” from the federal courts, a critical advantage to private companies that helps confer legal standing and means that a matter is less likely to be dismissed.

Mr. Pruitt’s office, in a statement to The Times, rejected any suggestion that the attorney general has been wrong to send to Washington comment letters written by industry lobbyists, or to take up their side in litigation.

“The A.G.’s office seeks input from the energy industry to determine real-life harm stemming from proposed federal regulations or actions,” the statement said. “It is the content of the request not the source of the request that is relevant.”

HAROLD G. HAMMThe oil drilling executive was the chairman of Mr. Pruitt’s re-election campaign.

Persuading lawmakers to offer legislation has been another effective lobbying tool. In West Virginia, Mr. Miller handed Attorney General Patrick Morrisey a draft of legislation that he argued would put West Virginia in a better position to sue the Obama administration over proposed regulations to tighten pollution controls on power plants, emails show.

“I trust you will find the legislation acceptable in its present form,” Mr. Miller wrote to Mr. Morrisey in February, referring to a private meeting the two had had in the law library of Mr. Morrisey’s office in Charleston. “If so, I would appreciate your having it introduced by your friends in both the Senate and the House.”

A version of the bill was introduced and passed by the West Virginia Legislature in March. Delegate Rupert Phillips Jr., the chief sponsor of a second bill that also contained language identical to what Mr. Miller had requested, said in an interview that he had acted with Mr. Morrisey’s support, an account supported by William B. Raney, the president of the West Virginia Coal Association.

“It is nice to have everybody singing from the same sheet of music,” Mr. Raney said.

A spokesman for Mr. Morrisey disputed this account, saying that while he supported the effort to challenge the rule, he did not play a role in promoting the legislation.

Blurred Lines

The work in Mr. Pruitt’s office has sometimes seemed to blur the distinction between his official duties and the advancement of his political career.

Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, Crystal Drwenski, served as gatekeeper to his office, arranging meetings and helping companies get Mr. Pruitt and his staff to intervene with the federal authorities. But Ms. Drwenski also played an important supplemental role for the attorney general: fund-raising aide.

“A.G. Pruitt is working with the Republican Attorneys General Association on their national meeting in Washington,” Ms. Drwenski wrote to Mr. Whitsitt. “The benefit of membership and participation is having 25 Republican A.G.s in a room to discuss policy issues.”

Ms. Drwenski wanted Devon Energy’s help in enlisting the American Petroleum Institute, and Mr. Whitsitt agreed.

“I’ve put in a plug to A.P.I.,” Mr. Whitsitt wrote back to Ms. Drwenski, a few hours after her request, having reached out to the organization’s senior lobbyist, Marty Durbin. “He is expecting a call.”

In addition to the American Petroleum Institute, major energy companies — ConocoPhillips, the oil and gas company; Alpha Natural Resources, a coal mining giant; and American Electric Power, the nation’s biggest coal consumer — have recently joined the Republican Attorneys General Association, bringing in hundreds of thousands of additional dollars to the group, internal documents show.

By last year, the association was starting to pull in so much money under Mr. Pruitt’s leadership that itdecided to break free from its partnership with the Republican State Leadership Committee, a group that represents state elected officials. Within months, the association also set up the Rule of Law Defense Fund, yet another legal entity that allows companies benefiting from the actions of Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general to make anonymous donations, in unlimited amounts. Fund-raising skyrocketed.

The $16 million that the association has collected this year is nearly four times the amount it collected in 2010, money it used mostly to buy millions of dollars’ worth of television advertisements in states like Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado and Nevada, all places where Republican candidates for attorney general won election.

The fund-raising has taken place on the state level as well. Oklahoma Gas & Electric — a for-profit utility that Mr. Pruitt joined with in federal court to fight the E.P.A. — invited its employees to the Petroleum Club in downtown Oklahoma City late last year for a fund-raising event for Mr. Pruitt, drawing donations from about 45 company employees, including the chief executive. Four days later, Mr. Pruitt filed a new appeal in the case — timing that the utility said was a coincidence.

While Mr. Pruitt’s efforts to raise money for the Republican Attorneys General Association have been an unqualified success, the lawsuits and regulatory appeals he has filed have yielded mixed results.

In May, the Supreme Court declined to take up the appeal on the Oklahoma Gas & Electric matter, meaning the company is now moving ahead on retrofitting its coal-burning plants. But other lawsuits are pending, including Mr. Pruitt’s challenge of the Dodd-Frank law, which rewrote the nation’s financial regulations, and, perhaps most important, his challenge of the tax subsidies that are a critical part of the Obama administration’s health care law.

Mr. Pruitt’s staff has juggled various duties — helping major corporations push their challenges against Washington, and then turning to these same executives, at times, to ask them for financial support.

For example, Ms. Drwenski, who is no longer Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, asked Devon Energy in 2012, on a workday afternoon, for help in signing up the American Petroleum Institute as a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association.

She used her personal email account to send out the initial request. But the subsequent exchange took place on her work email account, even though Oklahoma state law prohibits state officials from using state property or time to solicit political contributions. A spokesman for Mr. Pruitt said, “It is entirely possible she could have been taking a late lunch.”

Mr. Pruitt, whoran unopposedto win a second term, has not needed much of the money himself, but his fund-raising efforts have greatly benefited other Republicans running for the job.

That explains the partylike atmosphere late last month in South Florida, where members of the Republican Attorneys General Association held their fall meeting at the chic Fontainebleau Miami Beach, along with hundreds of lobbyists, lawyers and corporate executives, whose companies had paid as much as $125,000 for the privilege to celebrate with them.

During the opening reception, on a giant terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, with red, white and blue lights beaming onto the walls and rock music blasting, the Republican attorneys general strode to the stage to trumpet their new majority in the states.

Mr. Pruitt was there for the weekend’s festivities, an event at which Devon Energy served as a corporate host, with banners hung in the hotel hallways featuring the corporate logo.

The Oklahoma attorney general’s stay was brief. The Rule of Law campaign had a new and urgent target.

“Our president sees himself as above the law,” Mr. Pruitt said from Oklahoma City as he announced several days later yet another front in the campaign, a lawsuit he planned to file to challenge the Obama administration’s new immigration policies. “We will take action to hold him accountable.

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doc track changes

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/07/us/politics/oklahoma-attorney-general-letter-written-almost-entirely-by-energy-company.html?_r=0

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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/07/us/politics/documents-attorneys-general-and-the-energy-industry.html

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KEY DOCUMENTS

An examination of the letters shows in some cases that Mr. Pruitt took them, signed them and simply sent them along, making almost no changes. In one letter, only 37 words of more than 1,000 were modified.

Devon Energy is a major financial supporter of the association — which Mr. Pruitt took over in 2012 — donating $125,000 this year. In one email exchange, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff wrote to the head of lobbying at Devon to ask for help in getting the American Petroleum Institute to join the association.

Email exchanges between Devon and Mr. Pruitt, as well as representatives from the Republican Governors Association, show how the company turned to Republican attorneys general and governors for help in trying to block a proposed Bureau of Land Management fracking regulation. The pitch has been successful so far, as the implementation of the rule has been repeatedly delayed.

WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama’s new push against climate change may resistance from Republican-led state governments.

Obama on Tuesday announced his long-term climate change plan that will includeregulations on coal-fired power plants.

Some states are likely to resist -- a continuation of long-running fight between Obama and Republican governors, state legislatures andattorneys general on a variety of issues.

"In some of these states, there's just going to be a sort of reflexive, anti-Obama response," Sean Kelly, a political science professor at California State University Channel Islands told The Huffington Post. "They'll go to court. Some attorney general will see an opportunity."

Still, Kelly said Environmental Protection Agency regulations on power plant emissions probably will be difficult for states to obstruct because of a Supreme Court ruling that gave the executive branch a mandate to enforce the Clean Air Act.

Some state attorneys general have already weighed in on the climate fight. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt signed onto a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to take up a case that challenges existing EPA greenhouse gas regulations. Other attorneys general, including Scott Pruitt from Oklahoma, have askedthe federal government to grant states more authority to regulate natural gas drilling, orfracking. Texas' attorney general Greg Abbott, has petitioned the Supreme Court to take up his federal lawsuit challenging EPA's authority to regulate pollution.

In states with large coal mining industries, the proposals have proven controversial as well. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R)Obama's proposals will plunge his state into "an abyss of poverty." Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R)the plan a "war on jobs."

"People are rejecting science," said Wisconsin state Rep. Fred Clark (D-Baraboo). "Just two weeks ago, I got :{a book in the mail, along with every other (state) legislator, funded by the Heartland Institute:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: that basically tries to debunk the notion of climate change and claim that it's just part of a natural cycle." The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank partly funded by oil and tobacco companies, denies global warming and the health effects of secondhand cigarette smoke.

Clark said he has trouble convincing his Republican colleagues to view climate change as human-caused. In other states, including Missouri and Kansas, Republican-controlled legislatures recently have adopted a mixed bag of resolutions resisting federal and international recommendations for environmental policy.

Kansas state House Energy and Environment Committee Chairman Dennis Hedke (R-Wichita), led efforts in his stateto oppose the United Nations’ sustainability program, known as Agenda 21, along with banning sustainability in the state.

Hedke, a trained geophysicist who considers himself an environmentalist, told HuffPost he believes EPA regulations on energy producers are hurting businesses and families because of skyrocketing electricity bills. He also said the science used to promote policy is deeply flawed.

Existing EPA regulations have increased electricity costs in Kansas up to 60 percent in the last five years, Hedke said. Kansas' electricity costs are still 18 percent less expensive than the national average, according to an Institute for Energy Research fact sheet.

While Obama is likely to take action with executive power rather than legislation, Hedke and his counterparts in other states will have fewer options to resist. Nevertheless, they plan to fight back against the EPA and Obama.

"The EPA is just out of control. There's no other way to put it. And I'm going to fight the EPA with every fiber of my being for as long as I live," Hedke said. "We will take steps in the state of Kansas to try to push back on their unbelievable overreach and attempt to control the lives of Kansans and the people of the United States of America."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html

The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Continue reading the main story

Related Coverage

Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”

Continue reading the main story

Courting Favor

Articles in this series examine the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide.

The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.

They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow:For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority — 27 — of attorneys general’s offices.

The Times reported previously how individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more corporate-friendly settlement terms after intervention by lobbyists and lawyers, many of whom are also campaign benefactors.

But the attorneys general are also working collectively. Democrats for more than a decade have teamed up with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to use the court system to impose stricter regulation. But never before have attorneys general joined on this scale with corporate interests to challenge Washington and file lawsuits in federal court.

Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations, according to a review of thousands of emails and court documents and dozens of interviews.

www.nytimes.com/.../energy-firms-in-secretive-allian...

The New York Times

7 days ago - But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma's biggest oil and gas ...

www.nytimes.com/.../oklahoma-attorney-general-lette...

The New York Times

7 days ago - Devon Energy has secretly turned to Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma to combat new Obama administration regulations meant to ...

www.slate.com/.../republican_attorney_general_cooperation_scott_...

Slate

5 days ago - But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma's biggest oil and gas ...

kfor.com/.../i-was-stunned-ny-times-article-blasts-oklahoma-a...

KFOR‑TV

5 days ago - OKLAHOMA CITY – A New York Times article published over the ... Scott Pruitt of having a secret alliance with energy firms, like Devon Energy.

www.thelostogle.com/.../scott-pruitt-and-devon-energys-cozy-relationshi...

5 days ago - The piece hits Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt And Devon Energy especially hard. From the start, it chronicles and outlines the duo's ...

thinkprogress.org/.../investigation-energy-firms-attorneys-...

ThinkProgress

6 days ago - Using Oklahoma as an example, open-records requests revealed that ... The Times reports that Devon Energy “readily turned to Mr. Pruitt and ...

newsok.com/pruitt-defends-working...energy.../770250

The Oklahoman

4 days ago - The newspaper cited a letter Pruitt sent to the Environmental Protection ... for Devon Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based energy company.

raga bs

Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt was elected as the 17th Attorney General of the State of Oklahoma on November 2, 2010. He is the second Republican in the history of the state to hold the office, which oversees 80 attorneys. Attorney General Pruitt has quickly risen as a national leader in the cause of restoring limited government and the proper balance of power between the states and the federal government.

As a first priority in office, Attorney General Pruitt established Oklahoma’s first Federalism Unit in the Office of Solicitor General to more effectively combat unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach by federal agencies, boards and offices. 

In response to a personal call to defend the needs of children who are less fortunate, Attorney General Pruitt worked to negotiate a state settlement through the Department of Human Services that will dramatically improve foster care in Oklahoma. He was awarded the “Hero Award” by the Marland Children’s Home for his efforts to prevent closure of the home and eviction of children who are emotionally disabled. In 2011, Attorney General Pruitt received the Humanitarian Award by Oklahoma CARE, a coalition of ministries and providers who deliver care for troubled children and their families.

Establishing and respecting the Rule of Law is a hallmark of Attorney General Pruitt’s administration. In late 2011, Attorney General Pruitt made national headlines when he took the bold step of negotiating an Oklahoma settlement with mortgage servicers instead of joining a 49-state mortgage settlement that exceeded the proper legal role and scope of authority vested in state attorneys general.The Oklahoma agreement with several of the nation’s largest mortgage service providers included $18.6 million in compensatory damages for Oklahomans who were harmed by unfair practices during the foreclosure process.

Before being elected Attorney General, Pruitt served Broken Arrow, Coweta and Tulsa in the Oklahoma State Senate where he served for eight years, four of those as Assistant Republican Floor Leader. Attorney General Pruitt used his experience in the Legislature to transform the AG’s Workers’ Compensation and Insurance Fraud Unit and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.

Pruitt grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, where he graduated high school and earned a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Kentucky. He earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and political science at Georgetown College before being accepted to the University of Tulsa College of Law. After working his way through law school and earning a Juris Doctorate, Pruitt ventured into private practice, specializing in constitutional and employment law.

The Attorney General and his wife of 22 years, Marlyn, are raising two children, McKenna and Cade, in Tulsa. The Pruitts are members of the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, where Pruitt serves as deacon.

omg

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