E.P.A. Aide Questioned Deleting Sensitive Meeting Details. Then She Was Fired.

[applegrove]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/climate/pruitt-epa-calendar-morris.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

By Coral Davenport, Lisa Friedman, Eric Lipton and Steve Eder at the N.Y. Times

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WASHINGTON — Before he resigned on Thursday, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was facing new questions about whether aides deleted sensitive information about his meetings from his public schedule and potentially violated the law in doing so.

Last summer one of his senior schedulers, Madeline G. Morris, was fired by Mr. Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff, Kevin Chmielewski, who said he let her go because she was questioning the practice of retroactively deleting meetings from the calendar. Mr. Chmielewski has emerged as a harsh critic of Mr. Pruitt after a bitter falling out that led to his departure from the agency as well.

Ms. Morris, who started work as Mr. Pruitt’s scheduler in June 2017, confirmed Wednesday that she was fired after she raised objections about the deletions, which she believed were illegal, although she said that Mr. Chmielewski did not tell her his reasons for firing her. One case involved the deletion of several of Mr. Pruitt’s meetings during a spring 2017 trip to Rome, including one with a controversial cardinal then under investigation for sexual assault.

President Trump announced on Thursday that Mr. Pruitt, who had been the subject of numerous investigations into claims that he used agency resources for personal benefit, had resigned.



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