Biden Admin

GAO has uncovered certain facts which the Trump administration absolutely must consider and exploit as it pursues its announced regulatory corrections. This information sheds light on the previous administration’s process for adopting an unlawful “suite of regulations” imposing the “climate” agenda without any statutory authorization. Turns out, that plan was more unlawful than even we knew. In fact, this information…

It has been a busy time on the taxpayer-funded, green-group grant front. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency filed an appeal in the D.C. Circuit of a district court order that it unfreeze some of the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to activists, financing the industry that was engaged with the Biden administration to advance an aligned agenda. This is very…

Today’s update follows up on this and all prior posts about the Biden Department of Energy’s scandal over “pausing” liquified natural gas exports to non-FTA countries, at the behest of its environmentalist pressure group base—the lies involved in which are becoming increasingly outrageous as time passes. GAO has obtained this production of eleven records totaling 38 pages (including duplicates, essentially…

In GAO v DoE, the FOIA lawsuit which exposed the LNG “Scandal-pause,” Government Accountability & Oversight points out for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the Biden Department of Energy couldn’t keep its stories straight. From the introduction to GAO’s Memorandum in Opposition: Other documents filed yesterday are also available; do not be daunted by the…

If you have followed the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO Freedom of Information Act litigation, chronicled here, you know that the Biden-Harris DoE conducted a 2023 LNG export study then buried it, then effectively lied about this with a January 2024 announcement that LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries were being paused in order to…conduct such a study. More specifically,…

GAO has filed suit against the Biden-Harris DoE for the documents DoE identified as meeting the description of the 2023 LNG export study that, we are reliably informed, was performed, buried, then effectively lied about with the 2024 “pause-to-study” announcement. Which docs DoE then said, on second thought, weren’t “final reports” or “ready for release for the public’s view”, and…

Following up on this post, yesterday the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee held a hearing into the Biden-Harris Department of Energy politicizing U.S.  energy security and national security by “pausing” permitting for certain new exports of liquified natural gas. The subcommittee pressed for answers to the questions raised by GAO’s work and specifically referred on multiple occasions to DoE’s stonewalling…

Per a press release issued at the end of last week, tomorrow (Wednesday, December 4, 2024) at 4 pm: Interestingly, given how GAO has affirmed the political nature of this clearly major decision (reflected in the hearing’s title) with such far-reaching impacts, the Subcommittee will inquire into the role of John Podesta, now serving in the State Department role of…

Chris Horner, a lawyer for GAO in many open records cases as well as amicus briefs informing the courts what is actually going on with the regulatory onslaught we are seeing, had a piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal combining both topics. This item built on Horner’s most two recent Journal pieces, “The EPA Defies the Supreme Court” (August 2023)…

As part of GAO’s running tally of document productions on this matter: UPDATE: November 15, 2024 production is here. UPDATE: November 21, 2024 production is here. UPDATE: A supplemental, November 27, 2024 production following challenges to certain redactions is here. UPDATE: December 16, 2024 production is here. UPDATE: December 20, 2024 production is here. UPDATE: January 3, 2025 production is…

GAO filed a Notice of Supplemental Authority about this reporting by Bloomberg into the administration’s hurried effort to seal its (previously) stealth effort to stitch-up, before the January inauguration, a policy restricting exports of liquified natural gas (LNG) to non-FTA countries, grounded in a false pretext. From the filing:

Brief filed slamming DoE stunt suddenly deciding there are no LNG pause studies after all In the latest development involving the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, GAO has filed its Reply to the Biden-Harris Department of Energy’s Opposition to GAO’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, and Memo in support thereof. With…

Today’s lead Wall Street Journal lead editorial, titled “The Harris Disguise, Energy Edition,” airs the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. From the piece: Recall that in January the Energy Department imposed a moratorium on LNG permitting after a TikTok campaign made the issue a cri de coeur. Energy claimed the pause was…

The Washington Free Beacon reports on a letter submitted by the House Committee on Oversight & Accountability seeking answers to questions raised by GAO’s Freedom of Information Act litigation most recently noted here. Excerpting the story: In court filings cited by the Oversight Committee leaders and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the Department of Energy acknowledged in September that…

A ‘tell’ giving “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” a run for its money The biggest scandal waiting to happen in policy—first revealed here, reported on by the Daily Caller here and updated by GAO here—is the Biden-Harris Department of Energy freezing exports of liquified natural gas exports purportedly because it needed to conduct a…

Following up on this post, GAO sees this article in the Daily Caller both items detail GAO’s effort to formally ‘out’ to the public the Biden-Harris administration having buried an assessment of liquified natural gas exports which concluded they are a good and very beneficial thing. Whether and why in the world a bunch of activist political appointees would do…

DoE court filing supports claims of buried 2023 study, LNG “pause” based on a lie In a recent court filing, after months of stalling and flouting numerous legal obligations and deadlines the Biden-Harris Department of Energy, through its lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, let slip something it had spent a year, including three months…

This WaPo piece today is more notable for the context in which the violations come than the violations themselves, and recalls GAO’s previous caution: The inquiry reported immediately above was into something completely different, “contact between the agency’s top air official and Harvard University, his former employer.” GAO noted, on numerous occasions, Mr. Goffman’s approach to applicable legal limitations. These…

GAO had occasion to read the USEPA’s brief filed in the D.C. Circuit in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. EPA, a matter in which over half the states have sued the Agency challenging its decision to suddenly and dramatically tighten a primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for soot. This rule was pre-announced in March 2022 as one of the…