Business meeting to consider the nominations of David Fotouhi, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator, and Aaron Szabo, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Administrator, both of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Committee on Environment and Public Works
2025-03-13
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
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Participants
Transcript
So I'm going to call this meeting to order, and I appreciate everybody's flexibility, and I'd like to thank my staff and Senator Whitehouse's staff for accommodating us to be able to meet here in the Capitol. It's a big benefit. So I'm going to waive an opening statement for me, but I am going to say that the two folks that David Fatui and Aaron Szabo testified before our committee, and I am certainly in favor of them. They are going to be filling important roles at the EPA, and I look forward to having their service. So I'm going to let Senator, I'm not going to let, now Senator Whitehouse can give his opening statement. Well, actually, thank you, because you have let me do this, and your team has set up the
a video monitor, I wanted to share two minutes and 20 seconds from the hearing involving Andrew Szabo, because nobody else was in the room at the time, and it is one of the ways in which I want to express my frustration with where we are going on climate change stuff. We just had Zelden, who was tolerably reasonable, in what he said in his hearings, say that he's going to undo this whole litany of regulatory things, including everything having to do with the climate change religion. Every single one of your states has a state university that doesn't just understand climate science. It teaches climate science. So the notion that we're now in a place in which the person in charge of protecting us in this area is saying that it's a climate change religion and not climate science puts me into a really challenging position. If you could roll the tape, this is the kind of person that he will have working for him. And I just don't think this qualifies as any kind of a decent straight answer.
Thank you Senator for that question. I provided just general advice and thoughts with respect to policies within the Clean Air Act sections. Do you have or do they have any record of the advice that you gave? I am not aware of any records they may have. I was a volunteer, and I do not have any records.
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Unknown
You have no notes? You have no memos? Nothing was in writing in all of this? and you've gotten rid of them, or were there never any records? Senator, I have no records. That doesn't answer the question. Is the reason you have no records because you got rid of your records of your engagement with Project 2025? Senator, as a private organization, I'm not sure what their record-keeping policies were or are, but I do not have any records. Did you submit anything in writing to them at any point? Did you ever have records? You. Not that, you. Senator, I provided advice to Project 2025. How? By email, by phone, personal conversations, memos? Senator, I provided them advice in a number of ways. Including ways that were in writing? Senator, that's likely. Likely? Isn't that something you actually know since it was your advice and you would have written it down? How is that likely? Isn't that yes or no? So I don't know about all of you, but I've been a trial lawyer and a witness like that. no jury would ever believe anything else that he said after that.
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