EPA was rocked this summer when dozens of employees signed an open letter blasting the Trump administration’s disregard for science and agency staff.
Then came the probe: Senior political appointees and career officials went to work to find and later punish critics in EPA’s ranks.
Emails obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News under the Freedom of Information Act shed light on the internal investigation that began within hours of the EPA “Declaration of Dissent” going public on June 30. In the following days, the administration sifted through names of those who had signed the letter, shared legal advice and responded by placing close to 150 employees on administrative leave while their computers and email accounts were searched.
By summer’s end, most were suspended without pay while some were fired. The effort was designed to silence further dissent at the agency, according to EPA employees granted anonymity because they fear retaliation.
Michael Molina, the top political appointee in the Office of Mission Support, said he wouldn’t forget who signed the dissent letter.
“I have screen shots of every name on my phone,” Molina said in a July 3 email.
An EPA employee said the administration’s investigation was incompetent and sloppy, repeatedly sending the wrong documents to staff, disclosing personal information and misspelling email addresses. They weren’t surprised that Molina had screenshots of the names signed on the dissent letter.
“We have seen time and time again the lengths this administration will go to suppress free speech, even if they fumble the entire way,” said the staffer.
Stephanie Rapp-Tully, a partner at law firm Tully Rinckey, reviewed Molina’s email and said the political appointee was collecting evidence as part of the agency’s investigation, which is standard for such probes. Nevertheless, she said, there was an undercurrent to the message.
“It does have a tone of, ‘Because you sign this letter, you will face an action,’” Rapp-Tully said.
In response to questions for this story, EPA spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said in that late June, the agency “became aware of a number of names listed on the letter.”
“Following this, EPA worked to identify and confirm the scope of employee involvement of these individuals,” Hirsch said.
EPA officials dug through the signatories. In an email the day following the dissent letter’s release, Helena Wooden-Aguilar, then deputy assistant administrator for workplace solutions, said she did “some color coding” of 215 names on the letter.
She found 160 were current EPA employees. That included 18 who were already leaving, having opted into the administration’s “deferred resignation” program.
The scope of EPA’s investigation, however, spread. “The list has increased as of this am,” Wooden-Aguilar said in a July 2 email.
Stand Up for Science, the nonprofit group that helped organize the dissent letter, would take down from the internet the attached names. But the agency was not deterred in finding the signers.
Krysti Wells, another senior mission support official, said in a July 3 email there is “a site called Wayback Machine where you can look up archived websites.”
“We looked up the site and recovered the names on the site as of this morning (and downloaded the site into the attached PDF),” she said.
Molina responded, “Well done.”
“Glass is always half full,” Wooden-Aguilar replied.
On July 2, the mission support office had prepared notices for staffers who had signed the dissent letter. The next day, right before the July Fourth holiday, 145 EPA employees were placed on administrative leave until July 17, according to a recap of the week’s events by Wooden-Aguilar.
The employees’ leave would then be extended several times until the end of the summer. Then, some were cleared or issued a letter of reprimand. Others were fired, while the remaining were suspended without pay for two weeks.
Overall, 10 EPA employees received notices of proposed removal, while six on probationary status were terminated after they signed the dissent letter, according to a tally by American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, EPA’s largest union.
Wooden-Aguilar has since left EPA to join Workday, a cloud-based software company. She didn’t respond to emails seeking comment for this story.
‘Writing on the wall’
Many EPA employees signed the dissent letter, but only one sent it to Administrator Lee Zeldin.
Records show Mike Pasqua emailed it to Zeldin the morning of June 30. The letter was added to the administrator’s reading file, labeled “Urgent: High,” and shared with the mission support office “for informational purposes.”
Pasqua, a steward with AFGE Local 704 who works in EPA Region 5, confirmed to E&E News he was the one who sent the dissent letter to Zeldin.
“I volunteered to send it amongst a group of us who could see the writing on the wall early into this administration,” Pasqua said.
He added, “We quickly identified and cited multiple examples of him not fulfilling his obligation to the EPA mission and not fulfilling his oath to the Constitution, much less the commitments he made under oath at his confirmation hearing.”
Zeldin has been highly critical of the employees who dissented. On the day staffers were placed on leave, he said in a statement that employees were disrupting the administration’s plans by signing a letter “riddled with misinformation regarding agency business.”
In her recap, Wooden-Aguilar said the mission support office reviewed and refined the list of names on four criteria, which were former employees, unidentifiable names, staffers already removed from the agency and “Union Representatives.”
EPA union officials who signed the dissent letter said they weren’t caught up in the backlash from the agency. They were put on administrative leave briefly and then taken off or never placed on leave at all.
Rapp-Tully, an expert in federal employment law, said union officials working at agencies are shielded when speaking out on behalf of employees.
“That would have some additional weight, some additional protection,” she said. “Disciplining a union rep for doing union rep work is a big deal.”
‘For situational awareness’
The dissent letter was shared and discussed by President Donald Trump’s high-ranking political appointees at EPA.
Molly Vaseliou, principal deputy associate administrator in the external affairs office, sent a New York Times story about the letter to Molina. Molina also forwarded the breakdown of who signed the letter to Carter Farmer, EPA’s chief information officer.
The agency searched the signatories’ work computers and email accounts as part of its investigation. In addition, employees were told to answer a survey if they used federal resources to view and sign the dissent letter.
Wooden-Aguilar’s recap noted the mission support office had consulted with the Office of General Counsel as agency lawyers communicated to other officials about the dissent letter, according to the emails.
“For situational awareness,” Molina said in a July 2 email to Vaseliou and Travis Voyles, EPA’s associate deputy administrator. He forwarded an email chain from Nate Nichols, assistant general counsel in the Employment Law Practice Group, which was redacted.
“Please thank Justina and we are standing down for now. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!” Wooden-Aguilar responded on July 1 after a colleague passed on a redacted email from Justina Fugh, EPA’s senior counsel for ethics.
EPA’s statement didn’t address questions about what Nichols and Fugh said in their emails.
“As we told you at the time, the Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” said Hirsch, the agency spokesperson.
Brad Moss, a partner at law firm Mark S. Zaid PC who has represented federal whistleblowers, said government employees have rights when they speak out on dangers to public health or safety. But he added that the dissent letter’s signatories will struggle to find a remedy, considering the administration has crippled the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
“Unless the EPA can point to some part of the dissent letter that was restricted from disclosure as a matter of federal law, then the EPA employees retained statutory protection under the Whistleblower Protection Act and cannot be retaliated against as a direct result of that protected disclosure,” Moss said.
Several employees who signed the dissent letter have returned to EPA having completed their suspension, only to be sent home again during the government shutdown. Other signers are preparing to fight their firing.
EPA’s response to the dissent letter has frustrated many who remain on the payroll.
“If I were told that four toddlers in a trench coat had conducted this ‘investigation,’ I wouldn’t question it,” an employee said.
Contact this reporter on Signal at KevinBogardus.89.
