EPA Nominee Pruitt Ordered to Produce Documents About Fossil Fuel Ties.

Scott Pruitt - details of his relationship
 with the fossil fuel industry. 

An Oklahoma judge on Thursday ordered the state's attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to quickly release thousands of pages of documents after years of delay. 

The records could reveal details of his relationship with the fossil fuel industry, which he will be in charge of regulating nationwide once confirmed as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The ruling, in response to a public records request from an advocacy group, came a day before a planned Senate vote to confirm Pruitt as Donald Trump's chief of the Environmental Protection Agency. The state judge gave Pruitt's office until Tuesday to produce the records.

Senate Democrats who have been seeking some of the same records tried to delay the confirmation vote, arguing that the documents requested could shed light on Pruitt's ties to industries he would be charged with regulating as EPA administrator.

Oklahoma district judge Aletia Haynes Timmons issued the order after agreeing to expedite a lawsuit brought by The Center for Media and Democracy ahead of the confirmation vote. Timmons ruled that "there was an abject failure to provide prompt and reasonable access to documents request by plaintiff.”

CMD sued Pruitt earlier this month in Oklahoma state court, saying he had failed to produce public records in response to nine requests the group had submitted dating back to 2015.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “EPA Nominee Pruitt Ordered to Produce Documents About Fossil Fuel Ties.”