EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt placed a former political fundraising ally in charge of an office that has been slow to release his most sensitive documents — including details about his meetings with industry lobbyists and taxpayer-funded travels across the U.S. and Europe.

The role played by Elizabeth Beacham White, the former treasurer of Pruitt’s political action committee, adds to questions about the EPA leader’s pervasive habit of mixing his political, personal and official interests while leading the $8 billion agency. White, who touts an extensive career in the GOP fundraising world, joined EPA in September as director of its Office of the Executive Secretariat, which handles Freedom of Information Act requests for Pruitt’s office.


POLITICO learned of White’s hiring for the EPA job while reviewing internal emails obtained by the Sierra Club under a public records lawsuit.

As POLITICO has previously reported, the EPA administrator’s office has clamped down on requests for Pruitt’s calendars and communications, by instituting an extra layer of reviews beyond what the agency previously required. Pruitt’s office has had the slowest response rate of any section of the agency, far exceeding legal deadlines and prompting a massive surge in court challenges.

In her position, White is now the top official in charge of how the agency processes requests for records about Pruitt. Many of those documents, which environmental and watchdog groups have obtained in court, have shown Pruitt’s tight relationship with some of the same former donors and industry groups that supported him during his career as a politically ambitious Oklahoma attorney general.

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Public records advocates called White’s EPA role a glaring conflict of interest.


"It's alarming that someone who previously led an important part of Administrator Pruitt's political operation was put in a position with final say over all public releases of his records, facilitating a type of political interference in FOIA that has long been a concern of congressional oversight committees," said Andrew Bergman, who has been tracking EPA's public records policies with the watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight. "Someone so connected to Pruitt's past and future political ambitions would have a clear motive to slow the release of records that undermine his image. Government service requires public trust, and that should never tangle with political aspirations."

Watchdog groups have already expressed suspicion about the paucity of records EPA has produced regarding Pruitt. For example, while the agency’s political staffers have exchanged thousands of messages with outside groups, EPA’s responses to the Sierra Club’s records requests uncovered only one such email that Pruitt sent during his first 10 months on the job. The agency has also resisted releasing his detailed meeting calendars or travel records, including documents related to trips last year where he met or dined with energy industry supporters in Italy and Morocco.

EPA confirmed White's role and said she is "an attorney of 18 years with extensive experience in government ethics and compliance that includes previously serving in the federal government."

White interviewed for the job with Pruitt chief of staff Ryan Jackson on Aug. 30, and later expressed continued interest in taking the position. Her LinkedIn page says she began work as director of the EPA office in September.


Her name has not yet appeared on the office’s website, which describes part of the office’s mission as processing “Freedom of Information Act requests assigned to [the Office of the Administrator] and its staff offices. OEX coordinates search efforts, liaisons with the Office of General Counsel, and provides training to staff.” She appears in an employee directory that does not list her official position.

Before her time at EPA, White served as treasurer starting in the fall of 2016 of one of Pruitt’s outside fundraising groups, Liberty 2.0. That group shut down amid ethics questions in January 2017 following Pruitt’s nomination. In its termination report, Liberty 2.0 reported giving $102,554.72 to Future45, a super PAC backed by billionaires Joe Ricketts and Sheldon Adelson that strongly supports President Donald Trump.

White had worked since September 2012 at Clark Hill, a law firm with offices around the country that has deep ties to Pruitt. As a senior attorney, she helped political candidates “create and administer ‘Super PACs’ that support and/or oppose federal and state candidates and represent such entities before the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and state elections agencies,” according to a copy of her resume.

Another lawyer at that firm, Charles Spies, was counsel for Liberty 2.0 and Pruitt’s other PAC, Oklahoma Strong. And even after Pruitt took the helm at EPA, Spies continued to have close access to him.

In March 2017, Spies invited Pruitt to speak at the Global Leadership Conference in October 2017, which he described as an “off-the-record setting” for “senior executives of the automotive industry as well as select other invitees, to exchange ideas, and address solutions for critical global issues.” A senior aide responded in September that the invite was “a request we discussed yesterday to ask the Administrator if he wants to do.” He does not appear to have subsequently attended the West Virginia gathering.

A third Clark Hill attorney, Kenneth von Schaumburg, was the person who originally sent White’s resume to Byron Brown, a deputy EPA chief of staff. Brown then forwarded the document along to Jackson.

White also worked in the office of current White House counsel Don McGahn when he served on the Federal Election Commission. She was general counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee, was deputy general counsel for DCI Group, was a staff attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and worked as deputy redistricting counsel at the Republican National Committee.

White isn’t the only fundraising contact Pruitt has hired at EPA. His senior adviser Ken Wagner was treasurer of Oklahoma Strong.


His former scheduling aides, Millan and Sydney Hupp, also worked for that PAC and Pruitt’s Liberty 2.0 super PAC. Millan Hupp told congressional investigators last month that Pruitt asked her to purchase a used mattress for him from the Trump hotel in Washington and asked her to see if an Oklahoma energy consultant could help him land tickets to last year's sold-out Rose Bowl game.