In the wake of the forged letters scandal involving lobbyists for the coal industry, D.C. astroturf firm Bonner & Associates claimed to have reached out to Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and several Virginia charities whose names appeared on the fraudulent letters.ย It turns out that Bonner never contacted Rep. Perriello or at least three of the groups it claimed to have informed about the letter forgery episode.ย
Bonner & Associatesโ attorney Steven R. Ross of Akin Gump wrote in an August 12 letter to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that Bonner took immediate action in late June once it learned of the scandal, which it has blamed on a rogue temporary employee.ย Ross stated in the letter that Bonner left messages with Perrielloโs office on July 1st and that โon July 13, B&A staff succeeded in directly speaking with congressional staff for Rep. Perriello.โ
But the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports that Rep. Perrielloโs press secretary, Jessica Barba, has confirmed that Bonner & Associates never contacted Perrielloโs office.ย โI asked everybody in our office, did anybody hear anything from them about this?โ Barba said. โThey hadnโt. Nobody in our office ever talked toย them.โ
Several of the charities on whose behalf the phony letters were sent have also taken issue with Bonnerโs claim.ย Ross wrote in the letter to Congressional investigators looking into the forgeries that, โB&A personally contacted each of the eight organizations that were defrauded.โ
But Rick Turner, president of the Albemarle-Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP, โsaid he has never once heard from Bonner & Associates,โ the paper reports.ย Likewise, the Jefferson Area Board for Aging โnever heard from them,โ and Bonner did not notify Senior Center Inc. that their group was a target of the forgeries either.
The Hawthorn Group, a Beltway public relations firm retained by the coal industry front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, hired Bonner & Associates to pressure lawmakers in key districts not to vote for the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation which passed the House by a slim margin on June 26th.ย Bonnerโs attorney claimed in the letter to Congressional investigators that a temporary employee forged at least a dozen letters claming to represent opposition to the legislation from senior citizensโ, womenโs, black and Hispanic groups.
Bonner says that it immediately fired the employee after the fake letters were discovered, although the employeeโs identity remains a mystery.ย โHe does exist, but Jack feels it is not appropriate to reveal his identity,โ a spokesman for Jack Bonner, the firmโs founder, told the Daily Progress.
Despite learning of the forgeries days ahead of the critical House vote, Bonner did not reach the three Democratic lawmakers who received the fake letters until long after the vote, and apparently never reached Rep. Perriello or Rep. Christopher Carney.ย Congress is investigating whether the letter forgery scandal crossed ethical or legal lines.ย That investigation should be thorough and swift in order to clear the path for honest debate when the Senate returns to deliberate the bill.
This latest evidence of insincerity and misinformation adds to a growing heap of scandals plaguing the coal industryโs attempts to weaken action on climate and energy security.ย Coal pushers have waged an extensive (and expensive) campaign to attack efforts to regulate their global warming emissions and move America away from fossil fuels toward a clean energy future.ย
Perhaps realizing that their efforts to paint the industryโs product as โclean coalโ are failing, coal front groups have grown increasingly desperate.ย Joining ACCCE/Hawthorn/Bonner in the category of insincere โgrassrootsโ is FACES, a new coal front group crafted by K Street firm Adfero, ostensibly to show that โreal peopleโ support coal.ย Appalachian Voices discovered last week that pictures of the โreal peopleโ featured on the FACES website are all iStock Photo images.ย Oops.
With scandalous tactics like these, the coal industryโs front groups have marginalized themselves in the important debate on the future of Americaโs energy and climate security.ย They have betrayed โreal peopleโ with their fake letters, stock photos, and misleading outreach to elderly and veterans’ groups. It is time for Congress to address the loopholes in the Lobby Disclosure Act through which these astroturf groups are able to operate in theย dark.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts