EXCLUSIVE: Watchdog Demands Investigation Into Top Biden EPA Official
- August 24, 2022
Gabe Kaminsky, Daily Caller
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should investigate whether a top EPA official violated a key federal ethics pledge, watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) said in a complaint Wednesday obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Joseph Goffman, the acting head of the Office of Air and Radiation (OAR), replied to two Harvard University colleagues who were asking for favors in 2021, according to emails obtained by PPT that were shared with the DCNF. The watchdog is now urging the EPA’s inspector general to probe whether Goffman, who President Joe Biden tapped to lead the OAR, violated the federal ethics pledge, which bars appointees from dealing in matters “directly and substantially related” with their former employer for two years.
“Joseph Goffman is clearly someone who should know where the lines are without having to be lectured by ethics officials for crossing them,” Michael Chamberlain, director of PPT, told the DCNF. “Yet we believe these documents demonstrate a cavalier approach to his obligations.”