Congress Grills Coal Group ACCCE Over Failure to Disclose Forged Letters

U.S. Reps. Ed Markey and Jay Inslee spent the morning trying to get a straight answer out of two executives involved in a forged letter scandal that threatened to sink the House climate bill earlier this year.

Their inquiry boiled down to one simple question: Why didn’t you tell Congress?

The answer they came away with was never spoken by the executives — Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), and Jack Bonner, president and founder of Bonner & Associates. Instead, it was pieced together by the two lawmakers from the timing and a paper trail. In Markey’s words:

“It was clear that it was going to be a very close vote. And it was clear that it was going to be in the coal coalition’s interest to not correct the record.”

In testimony before the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming today, Miller and Bonner both acknowledged that at least 13 letters expressing concerns about electricity costs if the climate bill passed were forged by a Bonner employee using the letterheads of respected constituent groups representing minorities, seniors and women, and that those letters were sent to three coal-state House members.

Miller and Bonner also both admitted that they knew about the forgeries at least 32 hours before the House voted on the climate bill — and that they didn’t notify the targeted lawmakers until after the votes were recorded.

The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill on June 26 by a slim margin, 219-212. To get that much support, Markey and co-sponsor Rep. Henry Waxman spent weeks making deals with coal-state Congress members, weakening the bill. The three House members who received the forged letters — Reps. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), and Chris Carney (D-Pa.) — were among a handful of lawmakers considered potential "no" votes.

“Miscommunication to these members went right to the heart of our ability to have a debate on the facts of whether or not this energy legislation was good for the country,” Markey (photo) told Miller and Bonner.

House members talk to one another, he reminded them, and because of the letters, they were unwittingly spreading false information. “Those are not insignificant organizations in our country. That really does put the thumb on the scale against clean energy.”

Bonner, whose firm was working on a $43,500 contract from ACCCE communications firm Hawthorn Group to come up with grassroots support for ACCCE’s position, blamed a temporary employee “bent on committing fraud” for the forged letters. Bonner said he should have marched up to Capitol Hill and sat in those Congress members' offices to notify them personally, however, he had no answer as to why it took a week to pick up the phone and try to call them.

Miller, whose coal front group ACCCE provided the funding behind that contract, said he trusted that Bonner would notify the three targeted House members.

“Our misplaced reliance on Mr. Bonner’s firm to quickly take those actions” resulted in the failure, Miller said.

Inslee and Markey, both lawyers, weren't buying it.

"You’re giving us the Sgt. Schultz defense: I see nothing, I do nothing," Markey told Miller. (Or, as Inslee put it, it's like a guy who hires a hit man and tells him, just do it, don’t tell me how.)

"It seems to me that the real goal that you have at the end of the day is to kill the bill, and that what you’re sitting there trying to argue is that you have plausible deniability," Markey said. "This fraudulent activity was in your hands two days before the vote, and you had a chance to clarify it and didn’t."

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page »