Gao: Epa Used ‘covert Propaganda’ In Promoting Wotus

By Larry Dreiling

In a legal opinion, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency, said the Environmental Protection Agency violated publicity and anti-lobbying restrictions in its use of the social media platform Thunderclap to urge support for its Waters of the United States rule, the Food & Environment Reporting Network reported.

“Specifically, EPA violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition though its use of a platform known as Thunderclap that allows a single message to be shared across multiple Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts at the same time. EPA engaged in covert propaganda when the agency did not identify EPA’s role as the creator of the Thunderclap message to the target audience,” said a GAO summary of its 26-page report.

“EPA also violated anti-lobbying provisions through its hyperlinks to certain external Web pages in an EPA blog post. Both of the external Web pages led to appeals to the public to contact Congress in support of the WOTUS rule, which taken in context, constituted appeals to contact Congress in opposition to pending legislation,” said the GAO.

Republican lawmakers hope to bar the EPA from implementing WOTUS by adding a rider to the catchall government-funding bill that must be passed before Congress adjourns for the year. The rule, which defines the upstream reach of the Clean Water Act, also is under challenge in federal court and has been suspended by court order.

“GAO’s finding confirms what I have long suspected, that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda,” said Chairman Jim Inhofe of the Senate Environment Committee. Inhofe, R-OK, requested the GAO review.

“EPA’s illegal attempts to manufacture public support for its waters of the United States rule and sway congressional opinion regarding legislation to address that rule have undermined the integrity of the rulemaking process and demonstrated how baseless this unprecedented expansion of EPA regulatory authority really is.”

The New York Times, which said it was first to report the EPA activities, said the GAO concluded that the agency ran afoul of two rules: “Federal agencies are allowed to promote their own policies, but they are not allowed to engage in propaganda, which means covert activity intended to influence the American public. They also are not allowed to use federal resources to conduct so-called grassroots lobbying—urging the American public to contact Congress to take a certain kind of action on pending legislation.”

In response to the GAO report, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman said, “It’s clear from this report that EPA orchestrated this matter in a biased fashion. Now it’s up to Congress to clean up this mess by including a corrective measure in the omnibus bill now taking shape on Capitol Hill.

“Courts already have declared serious doubts about the legal authority for the rule. Now that it has become clear that the agency used illegal tactics to manufacture ill-informed support for the rule, Congress should act immediately to prohibit implementation of this rule, which is the product of an unlawful and misguided process.”

Stallman said the GAO findings vindicate those, like AFBF, who have claimed all along that EPA’s tactics advocating for this rule stepped past the bounds of proper agency rulemaking.

“EPA was focused only on promoting the rule rather than hearing good-faith concerns from a wide cross-section of Americans,” Stallman said. “The public deserves better when important matters of public policy are at stake.”