FOIA Documents From EPA Pt 1
With today's Fruit Grower Report, I'm Bob Larson. We told you recently that, after 16 long months, Save Family Farming finally got the documents it requested from the EPA to back up their claim the What's Upstream campaign was using taxpayer dollars to fund its anti-farming lobbying efforts.Director Gerald Baron says the documents clearly show there was full knowledge of the misused funds within the EPA ...
GERALD BARON ... "And there's one more, strong indication, even though the office of the Inspector General said the campaign didn't violate federal lobbying laws they did say it engaged in state lobbying. So, we have multiple indications that there was lobbying involved using taxpayer dollars and not according to the laws of this state. So, from our perspective it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, but according to our Attorney General it's not a duck. And, we're going to really challenge him on that."
Baron says these documents should seal the deal ...
GERALD BARON ... "So, we're going to remind them that they didn't really have the complete record of what happened here until all the documents have been released.
And now those documents have been released and we think there's new information that adds on to what we've already provided them that makes it very clear that if they choose not to enforce the state campaign laws it's a political decision and not a legal decision and we want to make that clear to the public."
Baron says if push comes to shove, they do have other avenues available. We'll tell you more about this new evidence and Save Family Farming's possible options tomorrow.