OPINION:
It has been a busy few days for a couple of federal agencies trying to explain away or ignore documents that emerged as a result of information requests pursued under the Freedom of Information Act.
After more than a year of trying, the Institute for Energy Research unearthed a memo from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that made it clear that President Biden made Willie Phillips the FERC chairman in January.
Unfortunately, a White House official at the time told the media that Mr. Phillips was the “acting” chairman of FERC. A press statement released by FERC at the time also identified him as “acting,” and as recently as last Friday, the FERC website still identified him as the acting chair in his official biography.
Even after the document definitively naming him chairman surfaced last week, nameless officials in the White House continued to lie and identify Mr. Phillips as an “acting” chairman.
Why the propaganda effort?
It is always difficult to ascribe motivations, but Mr. Phillips leans a bit too much toward reliable and affordable energy for the Biden administration, so this sotto voce campaign is probably intended to minimize him.
For the record, there is no such thing as an “acting chairman” at FERC. It’s binary: You are, or you aren’t. Mr. Phillips has been chairman — and an exemplary one — since January.
Meanwhile, over at the Department of the Interior, Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau recently announced that he would be leaving federal employment soon.
Perhaps coincidentally, the Functional Government Initiative (good luck with that) received documents through a FOIA request that indicate that meetings took place in mid-2021 between leaders of the Interior Department — including Mr. Beaudreau — and the Wilderness Society.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Wilderness Society was at the time the plaintiff against the Department of the Interior in litigation designed to shut down the Twin Metals mine in Minnesota, near the Boundary Waters.
The emails make it clear that those at the meetings know that they probably shouldn’t have been there talking about active litigation without everyone else being present. The “everyone else” who should have been present includes the lawyers for the Twin Metals mine.
That didn’t stop the lawyers for either the Interior Department or the Wilderness Society, who were also careless enough to note that the purpose of the meeting was to “discuss some of the legal and policy pathways for protecting the Boundary Waters watershed.”
In short, the two (nominally) opposing parties in litigation had a meeting to talk about how they could prevent the Twin Metals mine from ever opening, and they made sure that the other lawyers involved in the case were locked out of those discussions.
Interior Department leadership also understood that hosting the meetings looked bad, as Mr. Beaudreau’s available public calendars do not include the July 2021 meeting with the Wilderness Society crew.
It’s probably better for Mr. Beaudreau that he is leaving the scene soon.
Whether other secret meetings were held between Interior officials and plaintiffs in the Twin Metals litigation remains unknown, at least until the department produces additional records in response to the Functional Government Initiative’s FOIA request.
We do know how the Twin Metals story turned out. The Wilderness Society dropped its lawsuit after the Biden administration announced it was canceling the leases for the Twin Metals mine and placing a 20-year moratorium on development in the area, effectively killing the project.
Rep. Pete Stauber, the congressman for the district where the Twin Metals project should be, had a few thoughts. “The FOIA request brought to light what we have known all along, which is that the Biden administration’s decision to cancel the long-held federal leases for Twin Metals Minnesota was purely political. Not only did Interior ignore the facts, science and needs of my constituents when making this decision, but the lack of transparency surrounding their decision also raises a real red flag.
“President Biden’s mining policy has always been anywhere but America, and any worker but American.”
The reality is that the Freedom of Information Act is one of the few useful tools that allow us mere citizens to learn about the workings of our own government. Ask Mr. Phillips or Mr. Beaudreau. It should be expanded and simplified, and government agencies should have to post everything already subject to FOIA requests — calendars, memos, etc. — online to make finding the documents easier.
If you want to change the federal government, open the windows — and the books.
• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies.
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