EPA Chief Met With Canadas Scientist-Muzzling Ex-Prime Minister Before Scientist Purge
Source: Huffington Post
07/26/2017 05:56 pm ET | Updated 50 minutes ago
The agency denied seeking policy advice from former Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a meeting arranged by a top Comcast lobbyist over text messages.
By Alexander C. Kaufman
According to emails HuffPost has obtained, the March 27 meeting, scheduled to last 30 minutes, was meant to establish a rapport between the new environmental regulator and the conservative former prime minister. But it’s notable that Harper was accused of transforming Canada into a petrostate and overseeing an assault on scientific research during his nine years in Ottawa. He left office in 2015, after losing to now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Rick Smotkin, a top lobbying executive at Comcast Corporation, arranged the meeting, pitching the idea to Pruitt’s scheduler, Sydney Hupp, as “just a meet and greet.” The emails were released last month in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the watchdog Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Harper is former conservative prime minister of Canada,” Smotkin wrote in a March 22 email to Hupp. “So just a good person for him to meet.”
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-stephen-harper_us_5978f977e4b02a4ebb7274d9?section=us_politics