Free Republic

Illustrating how government hides information from the American public, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch used a fake name to conduct official Department of Justice (DOJ) business in agency emails obtained by Judicial Watch. As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer Lynch, Barack Obama’s second attorney general, skirted public-records laws by using the alias Elizabeth Carlisle in emails she sent from her official DOJ account. In the records provided to Judicial Watch, the DOJ explains it as necessary to “protect her security and privacy and enable her to conduct Department business efficiently via email.” This begs the question of how many...

Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who used a secret email alias during her time at the agency, lashed out Tuesday at the Trump administration for destroying the agency’s credibility by being “non-transparent.” Ms. Jackson, who is now a senior executive at computer giant Apple, said new Administrator Scott Pruitt and the rest of the new leadership have betrayed what she said was a decades-long bipartisan commitment. “EPA’s been run by Democrats and by Republicans, but it’s never, in its history, 40-plus years old, been run by someone who seems to be determined to do the one thing that could destroy...

Hillary Clinton did two huge favors for Morocco during her tenure as secretary of state while the Clinton Foundation accepted up to $28 million in donations from the country’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, according to new information obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group. Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson tried to shut down the Florida-based Mosaic Company in 2011, operator of America’s largest phosphate mining facility. Jackson’s close ties and loyalty to the Clintons were revealed when she joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors in 2013, just months after she left the EPA....

Lisa Jackson, the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator who was caught using an email account under the pseudonym “Richard Windsor,” sits on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the charity of Hillary Clinton, of HDR22@clintonemail.com fame. Jackson’s — or “Windsor’s” — position on the board has not been a secret, but it has received little media attention during the Clinton email scandal, which threatens to derail the Democrat’s White House hopes. Jackson’s biography on the Clinton Foundation’s website shows that she took her position there in 2013. The bio states that Jackson is currently vice president of environmental initiatives as...

Business has been captured by Climatism, the belief that humans are causing dangerous global warming. Leading businesses announce plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, purchase renewable energy, use vehicle biofuels, and buy carbon credits. But there is no evidence that commercial policies to “fight” climate change have any measureable effect on global temperatures. Apple and Google, the darling companies of the millennial generation, have spent billions trying to halt global warming. Apple has brought us the Mac personal computer, the I-Phone, the I-Pad, and other trend-setting electronic devices, becoming the world’s highest-valued company. Google has been called the most innovative...

Former CIA Director David Petraeus plea-bargained to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material after having given classified government information to his onetime mistress, Paula Broadwell. How was Gen. Petraeus‘ transgression uncovered? By exposure of a nongovernment email account that he had set up with to communicate with Ms. Broadwell free of CIA scrutiny.After a series of Democratic scandals in the New York state legislature, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is instituting a policy to have the emails of state employees automatically deleted after 90 days. Apparently, Mr. Cuomo does not want e-trails of politicians’ communications. Meanwhile, the...

The controversy over Hillary Clinton's email usage while she was secretary of state has been largely driven by the media, and for good reason. The New York Times broke the news that she used a private email address and homebrew server for official business, and the rest of the media—with mixed motives—ensured that it became a controversy. Some outlets are concerned that Clinton used her personal account to skirt open-records laws; the Associated Press sued the State Department on Wednesday "after repeated requests filed under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act have gone unfulfilled." Others are fascinated about the political...

Attorney General Eric Holder used secretive email accounts under aliases during his tenure at the Justice Department, raising fresh questions about the Obama administration’s compliance with federal records laws as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reels from her own email scandal. Holder has emailed under the nom de plume “Henry Yearwood” in the past, former Justice Department officials say. The Huffington Post reported Tuesday that Holder had used three aliases. The current is unknown. Republicans familiar with the issue said that even when congressional officials traveled to the Justice Department for so-called “in camera” review of documents, Holder’s email...

The Associated Press has uncovered what may become a vast new scandal for the Obama administration: the possibly widespread use of covert email accounts by political appointees, enabling evasion of sunshine laws designed to protect the public. Jack Gillium of AP reports: Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery:...

The EPA’s inspector general cleared the agency Monday of wrongdoing in its employees’ use of private email accounts to conduct government business, saying that, after talking with senior officials, investigators found no evidence employees were trying to circumvent open-records laws. But the investigators also said the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t written procedures to help employees know how to store their private emails as official agency records, nor has it done a good job of providing training. “EPA senior officials indicated that they were aware of the agency records management policies and, based only on discussions with these senior officials, the...

WASHINGTON The capital is full of portraits of government officials, sometimes more than one of the same person.... an effort is underway to put an end to the practice of taxpayers footing the bill for the commissioned paintings. The measure is dubbed the Eliminating Government-funded Oil-painting, or EGO, Act. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced it after reports that the Environmental Protection Agency spent $38,350 for former administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s portrait. “Lisa Jackson can borrow my camera for free,” he suggested.

In a sign her troubles have undergone a significant expansion, the Washington Free Beaconreported last week that formerEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has hired a lawyer as new details of her use of private email accounts to conduct official government business were revealed. The agency and its previous head have still breathed easy despite months of inquiries andFreedom of Information Act requests fromChris Horner of theCompetitive Enterprise Institute and American Tradition Institute. Jackson and enviro-crats have been shielded by colleagues’ efforts to block access to records, delay their delivery, or conceal damning information with redactions. Nevertheless the indefatigable Horner has continued...

Through their efforts, the Competitive Enterprise Institute first shed some light on the rather mysterious life and times of one Richard Windsor, the extralegal nome de plume used by Obama’s former Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson in conducting official EPA business over e-mail. Open-records laws require that all government business be conducted on official accounts so they can later be searched in the event of any Freedom of Information Act requests, and standard protocol directs that if any private e-mails are used for government business, they should be forwarded to official accounts. Jackson and other EPA employees repeatedly failed...

SAVANNAH, Ga. — The line of Paula Deen fans waiting for her restaurant here to open grew throughout the hot, muggy morning Saturday. They discussed what they might select from the buffet inside The Lady and Sons, her wildly popular restaurant in the heart of Savannah. But they also talked of boycotting the Food Network, which dropped their beloved TV chef on Friday after she awkwardly apologized for having used racial slurs and for considering a plantation-themed wedding for her brother, with well-dressed black male servants. The predicament that Ms. Deen finds herself in began when a former employee —...

Reporting from Atlanta— A former employee of a restaurant co-owned by Paula Deen has filed a lawsuit against the matronly celebrity cook, accusing her of condoning an atmosphere of sexual harassment and racism in her high-profile culinary empire. The suit also accuses Deen of casually referring to black people with a racial epithet. The civil complaint, which was filed Monday in state court in Savannah, Ga., was brought by Lisa T. Jackson, a former manager at Uncle Bubba's Oyster House, one of five restaurants in Deen's group. The Savannah-based oyster house is co-owned by Deen and her brother, Earl W....

Is Big Green running things in President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency? Wake up and smell the corruption. A virulent 2009 sue-and-settle lawsuit, WildEarth Guardians v. Jackson (as in Lisa Jackson, former EPA administrator) is an outrageous sweetheart deal rife with collusion and manipulation to create arbitrary regulations, along with the EPA takeover of state regulatory programs and a price tag of more than $2.5 billion -- all aimed against the domestic fossil fuel industry.

Richard Windsor may be the most famous Environmental Protection Agency employee. Oddly, he does not exist. “Windsor” is the e-mail alias that Lisa Jackson, former head of the EPA and now an environmental adviser to Apple, used to correspond with environmental activists and senior Obama-administration officials, among others. Windsor, we have learned, was also an employee of significant achievement. Documents released by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that, for three years, the EPA certified Windsor as a “scholar of ethical behavior.” The agency also documented the nonexistent Windsor’s completion of training courses in...

Lisa Jackson, meet Apple. The biggest piece of new information that Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped last night at the D11 conference: That he's hired Jackson, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to lead Apple's green efforts. The move strikes me as both bold and risky. It's bold because in Jackson, Cook gains a high-profile and well-connected chemical engineer who is well-versed in policy. Apple's environmental footprint is immense; the company literally produces and packages more than 100 million devices every year, most of them iPhones and iPads. Apple has the largest non-utility solar power farm in the country,...

<p>Former EPA chief Lisa P. Jackson went so far as to impersonate a chimerical assistant “Richard Windsor,” according to the latest bizarre twist in the congressional investigation into the agency’s troubled transparency record.</p> <p>Sen. David Vitter, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released a new batch of emails Wednesday from Richard Windsor, which was the secondary email Ms. Jackson used to conduct business. Investigators have questioned whether that email address was used to hide records from public view.</p>

Top Environmental Protection Agency officials used computer instant messages to try to circumvent open-records laws, according to a new lawsuit filed late last week by a researcher who has been demanding the agency comply with the law. Christopher C. Horner, the researcher who earlier uncovered that EPA officials were using private email addresses to conduct official business, said that in going over some of those earlier records he discovered the agency was using instant messages, too. He now is suing to get a look at those records, which he said EPA has refused to release. “It seems we have uncovered...