Environmental prosecutor and big oil in bed together-literally
Now isn’t this just cozy as heck:
Top Prosecutor, Lobbyist Bought Home
WASHINGTON (AP) – A House committee will investigate and request documents on a real estate deal involving the government’s top environmental prosecutor and ConocoPhillips’ top lobbyist, and legal agreements between the government and the oil company.
The inquiry by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was announced hours after The Associated Press reported that the prosecutor, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, bought a $1 million vacation home on Kiawah Island, S.C., with ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald R. Duncan, nine months before agreeing to let the company delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup. It was one of two proposed consent decrees Wooldridge signed with ConocoPhillips just before resigning last month.
‘’There appears to be a breakdown of ethics at the Justice Department,’’ the committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Wednesday night. ‘‘Senior Justice Department officials should not be handling cases that affect their close friends and investment partners.’’
The third buyer of the beachshore getaway was former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, the highest-ranking Bush administration official targeted for criminal prosecution in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.</em>
Fiddle Nero, fiddle.