AP
AP: Top prosecutor, lobbyist bought home
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Thu Feb 15,
WASHINGTON - 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.
In one of her last acts, Wooldridge signed proposed consent decrees with ConocoPhillips,
one delaying the required installation of $525 million in pollution controls
at nine refineries and the other dealing with a Superfund toxic waste cleanup.
Last April, Wooldridge, Duncan and Griles bought a $980,000 home in a gated
community at Kiawah Island. Records from the Charleston County Auditor's office
obtained by the AP list Duncan as a 50 percent owner of the home and Wooldridge
and Griles as 25 percent owners.
ConocoPhillips said in a statement Wednesday night that Duncan had no involvement
in negotiating the consent agreements.
"We object to the suggestion that the real estate transaction involving
Don Duncan, which was cleared in advance by the ethics office of the Department
of Justice, had any impact whatsoever on the consent decrees entered into by
ConocoPhillips or the recent SEC filing amending ConocoPhillips code of ethics,"
company officials said. "Any savings resulting from these delays are expected
to be offset by the cost of additional and stricter controls agreed to in the
amended agreement."
Griles, now an oil and gas lobbyist, began dating Wooldridge while he was her
boss at Interior. He was the department's No. 2 official from July 2001 to January
2005, behind only former Secretary Gale Norton. He and Duncan, ConocoPhillips'
chief Washington lobbyist, both served on President Bush's presidential transition
team.
Wooldridge and Griles have known each other at least since the first year of
the Bush administration in 2001, when Wooldridge became deputy chief of staff
and counselor to Norton. Bush appointed Wooldridge as Interior's top lawyer
in June 2004.
After she became Interior solicitor, Wooldridge told the department's ethics
office she and Griles had begun dating, an Interior spokesman said.
Bush later appointed Wooldridge to head the Justice Department's environment
division, representing virtually every federal agency, and she began working
there in November 2005.
Stephen W. Grafman, Wooldridge's attorney, said she paid for her share in the
home and was told by the Justice Department's ethics office a month before the
sale went through "that the purchase was not a problem."
"There was no need to recuse herself from ConocoPhillips since she was
advised by the appropriate ethics officials that there was not a conflict,"
Grafman said. "Mr. Duncan invested in the property as an individual and
friend."
Grafman said Duncan never lobbied Wooldridge for himself or his company.
Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson confirmed that Wooldridge "sought
the advice of ethics officials who informed her that the purchase did not raise
ethical issues."
Magnuson said the consent decrees with ConocoPhillips "were approved through
the normal management channels and were presented to Sue Ellen with the unanimous
recommendations of her career staff as well as those of the EPA."
Griles' lawyer, Barry M. Hartman, called the home a shared investment among
people who have known each other for years. "What exactly is wrong with
three close personal friends sharing a vacation/rental home?" he said.
Wooldridge submitted her resignation letter from Justice on Jan. 8, three days
after other prosecutors in the department met with Griles to outline criminal
charges they are seeking against him. She said in the letter she wanted to return
to private sector work.
The federal task force heading the Abramoff corruption probe also has become
interested in Wooldridge and her connections to Griles, people familiar with
the investigation said on condition of anonymity, citing the issue's sensitivity.
Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service
and an expert on presidential appointees, said Wooldridge's participation in
the home purchase and ConocoPhillips settlements "creates the impression
of favoritism, or favors due."
"From an appearance standpoint it's awful, and from a legal standpoint
it's questionable," Light said Wednesday. "Political appointees have
been indicted for less."
Wooldridge's last day at Justice was Jan. 19. One of the proposed agreements
she signed before leaving would change the terms of a major air pollution settlement
with ConocoPhillips announced in 2005.
To settle charges of Clean Air Act violations, the new agreement Wooldridge
signed would delay deadlines the government imposed — some by two to three
years — for cutting emissions of chemicals that cause smog and soot. It
also postponed by more than a year potential penalties and pollution reporting
requirements. The agreement cited damage to a refinery from Hurricane Katrina
as reason for some of the delays.
Wooldridge did not list her share in the South Carolina home in a financial
disclosure she submitted a month after the real estate deal. That report covered
calendar 2005 and Wooldridge resigned before having to submit a new report for
2006.
Wooldridge also put her undated signature on a proposed consent decree involving
ConocoPhillips and a Superfund toxic waste site. It is among dozens of company
that would pay $500,000 in damages and up to $10 million to clean an 8-acre
site in Elkton, Md.
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