The issue of whether Obama administration officials are using private emails to hide controversial actions they take in their official capacity is heating up both on and off Capitol Hill.

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee scheduled a deposition with a top Department of Energy staffer in which investigators were expected to discuss the email issue as it relates to the agency's controversial loan program.

And yesterday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) announced that it would file suit in federal district court charging that U.S. EPA is shielding a senior official who is hiding public records on private email accounts.

As of noon today, it remained unclear whether the Oversight and Government Reform deposition would take place, after the panel's top Democrat this morning expressed concern that committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was trying to force Morgan Wright, the director of strategic initiatives in DOE's Loan Programs Office, to appear despite the fact that he had yet to obtain counsel.

Discussing his ongoing probe of the loan program yesterday, Issa said his staff has discovered evidence of multiple people at DOE circumventing the Federal Records Act by deliberately switching to personal email accounts to avoid having certain emails captured by federal retention systems.

"Circumventing the Federal Records Act is a crime," Issa said in discussing the subpoenas he sent last week. "The Gmails and other mails that these individuals were using reflect both the violation of the law [and] the breadth of the conspiracy that existed among these individuals."

Ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a letter to Issa this morning that after receiving a subpoena from the committee last week, Wright began the process of finding private counsel at his own expense. But after he found an attorney, a "routine conflicts check" by the lawyer's law firm revealed that he could not represent Wright, a situation that Cummings called "a common occurrence in these matters."

Cummings said Wright is still trying to find another lawyer and informed the committee of the situation.

"Despite all of these good faith efforts by the employee to comply with the demands of the Committee, I was informed this morning that you directed your staff to order this employee to appear today even without counsel," Cummings said in his letter. "I strongly object to this approach."

Cummings noted that the right to counsel is a matter of committee rules.

This is the second time in two days that Cummings has accused Issa of breaking committee rules after objecting to the issuance of a dozen subpoenas last week, saying he was not consulted. Issa said yesterday that proper notice was given to Democratic staff before the subpoenas were issued last week (Greenwire, Sept. 11).

A spokesman for Issa said in an email today that Wright "has a legal obligation to appear" at today's deposition and that "no witness subpoenaed for a deposition has ever failed to appear before the Oversight Committee. "

The spokesman said that any concerns about Wright's representation will be discussed "once he meets his legal obligation to appear" for the deposition.

An 'epidemic' of personal emails

A news release from CEI yesterday called the practice of using nonofficial accounts for official business an "epidemic" in the Obama administration, and the group referenced Issa's ongoing battle with DOE over the issue in its case filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The filing stems from a May Freedom of Information Act request in which CEI sought correspondence between EPA's Region 8 Administrator James Martin and the Environmental Defense Fund, for whom Martin previously worked.

CEI said in a release yesterday that the request was aimed at uncovering the extent to which Obama administration policymaking was being coordinated with outside environmental groups.

After going through the FOIA process, CEI charged that EPA has not responded to its request for records from Martin's private email account and that the court case "will pave the way for obtaining all such public records stashed in private corners and thus out of reach of the nation's transparency laws, which clearly prohibit this kind of activity."

An EPA spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the case by press time. According to a CEI spokesman, the government has 60 days to respond to CEI's court filing.