WASHINGTON, D.C. (E&E News) — EPA was rocked this summer when dozens of employees signed an open letter blasting the Trump administration’s disregard for science and agency staff.
Then came the probe: Senior political appointees and career officials went to work to find and later punish critics in EPA’s ranks.
Emails obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act shed light on the internal investigation that began within hours of the EPA “Declaration of Dissent” going public on June 30. In the following days, the administration sifted through names of those who had signed the letter, shared legal advice and responded by placing close to 150 employees on administrative leave while their computers and email accounts were searched.
By summer’s end, most were suspended without pay while some were fired. The effort was designed to silence further dissent at the agency, according to EPA employees granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.
Michael Molina, the top political appointee in the Office of Mission Support, said he wouldn’t forget who signed the dissent letter.
“I have screen shots of every name on my phone,” Molina said in a July 3 email.
An EPA employee said the administration’s investigation was incompetent and sloppy, repeatedly sending the wrong documents to staff, disclosing personal information and misspelling email addresses. They weren’t surprised that Molina had screenshots of the names signed on the dissent letter.
“We have seen time and time again the lengths this administration will go to suppress free speech, even if they fumble the entire way,” said the staffer.
Stephanie Rapp-Tully, a partner at law firm Tully Rinckey, reviewed Molina’s email and said the political appointee was collecting evidence as part of the agency’s investigation, which is standard for such probes. Nevertheless, she said, there was an undercurrent to the message.
“It does have a tone of, ‘Because you sign this letter, you will face an action,’” Rapp-Tully said.
In response to questions for this story, EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said in that late June, the agency “became aware of a number of names listed on the letter.”
“Following this, EPA worked to identify and confirm the scope of employee involvement of these individuals,” Hirsch said.
EPA officials dug through the signatories. In an email the day following the dissent letter’s release, Helena Wooden-Aguilar, then deputy assistant administrator for workplace solutions, said she did “some color coding” of 215 names on the letter.
She found 160 were current EPA employees. That included 18 who were already leaving, having opted into the administration’s “deferred resignation” program.
The scope of EPA’s investigation, however, spread. “The list has increased as of this am,” Wooden-Aguilar said in a July 2 email.
Stand Up for Science, the nonprofit group that helped organize the dissent letter, would take down from the internet the attached names. But the agency was not deterred in finding the signers.
Krysti Wells, another senior mission support official, said in a July 3 email there is “a site called Wayback Machine where you can look up archived websites.”
“We looked up the site and recovered the names on the site as of this morning (and downloaded the site into the attached PDF),” she said.
Molina responded, “Well done.”
“Glass is always half full,” Wooden-Aguilar replied.
On July 2, the mission support office had prepared notices for staffers who had signed the dissent letter. The next day, right before the July Fourth holiday, 145 EPA employees were placed on administrative leave until July 17, according to a recap of the week’s events by Wooden-Aguilar.
The employees’ leave would then be extended several times until the end of the summer. Then, some were cleared or issued a letter of reprimand. Others were fired, while the remaining were suspended without pay for two weeks.
Overall, 10 EPA employees received notices of proposed removal, while six on probationary status were terminated after they signed the dissent letter, according to a tally by American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, EPA’s largest union.
Wooden-Aguilar has since left EPA to join Workday, a cloud-based software company. She didn’t respond to emails seeking comment for this story.
