Elon Musk emailed Obama EPA director on her pseudonym account, begging director for special help

From John Fund at Fox News:

. . . But on December 13, 2012 the EPA’s assistant inspector general announced he would conduct an audit into Jackson’s use of private email accounts under the alias “Richard Windsor” to conduct official government business. 

Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute had brought a lawsuit to make 12,000 of Jackson’s “alias” emails public. Before that could happen, Jackson announced she would be leaving office on December 27, 2012 – apparently with the strong private encouragement of the White House. 

It took three more years of litigation to get all of Jackson’s private emails released. We now know that her alias email accounts were her prime method of doing business. 

One of the more infamous emails involved the billionaire inventor and businessman Elon Musk begging Jackson on her false-identity account for an emergency assist for his already heavily subsidized Tesla Motors. Musk wanted Jackson’s EPA to give Tesla a “certificate of conformity” that other companies had to formally apply for. 

Jackson quickly brought in top EPA aides, asking “what can be done?” Within hours, the certificate was approved and Jackson wrote to her senior aides: “Done. Elon replied to say thank you.” . . .

Prominent gun control advocate David Hogg uses screen name davisgreen111

David Hogg's Twitter account is @davidhogg111, so possibly it isn't too surprising that he has set up a Reddit account with the name davisgreen111.  The point of this pseudonym seems to be to get advice on how Hogg could reach and influence more people.

On Wednesday, the /pol/ board on 4chan speculated that they had found an anonymous Reddit account called davisgreen111 that belonged to David Hogg. Today, Big League Politics has exclusively confirmed that davisgreen111 is David Hogg. 

The most popular post on the davisgreen111 Reddit account is a link to David Hogg’s lifeguard confrontation video, which many are familiar with. It was the video that originally caused speculation that Hogg actually lived in Redondo Beach, CA, and not Florida . . . . 

It appears that Hogg was looking for advice on how to best display his name, which flashes across the beginning of video . . . .

Will anyone care that he was using this pseudonym? 

Meet FormerBu. Actually former FBI director James Comey

From Fox News:

Former FBI Director James Comey’s 'secret' Twitter account has finally been revealed after months of rumors linking him to cryptic tweets from the @FormerBu account. 

The account created a stir earlier this year when Gizmodo reported that it likely belonged to Comey. At the time the account used the handle @projectexile7. The account’s name has remained Reinhold Niebuhr. . . .

Obama’s Attorney General Used Fake Identity To Hide Her Involvement In Development of Clinton Investigation E-Mails talking points

From the Daily Caller:

Like her predecessor, Eric Holder, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch used an email alias to conduct government business, The Daily Caller has confirmed. 

Several of Lynch’s emails were included in 413 pages of DOJ documents provided to the conservative groups Judicial Watch and the American Center for Law and Justice. Both groups had filed lawsuits for records regarding Lynch’s controversial meeting with President Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport last June 27. 

Using the pseudonym “Elizabeth Carlisle,” Lynch corresponded with DOJ press officials to hammer out talking points in response to media requests about the meeting. The tarmac encounter drew criticism from conservatives because Lynch was overseeing the federal investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email system. 

The meeting was revealed not by Lynch, Clinton or the Justice Department, but by a reporter in Phoenix working based on a tip. 

Lynch, using the Elizabeth Carlisle account, which was hosted on the Justice Department’s system, was also involved in those discussions. . . .

Sock puppets taken to an entirely new level: 'click farm' of 10,000 phones that give FAKE 'likes'

The UK Daily Mirror has some amazing footage of 'Click farms" that distort what people see on the web.

Footage has emerged of a giant "click farm" that uses more than 10,000 mobile phones to give product ratings and pages on social media websites phoney "likes". 

Companies reportedly pay thousands to get their apps more likes by using services like this massive plant offers. 

This covert clip in China shows rows and rows of like-making machines all wired to other devices in a factory. 

And there are said to be thousands more phones in the same building all made for the same  . . . .

Sharyl Attkisson also has a closely related video here.

What are you waiting for? Pre-order The Smear today! You won't regret it. :) https://t.co/BsXVB7qIIi pic.twitter.com/l8pUSqD8v1

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) May 15, 2017

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman caught editing users’ comments, he rewrote posts, replacing his name with others in Trump discussion

Will Reddit recover?  While the computer industry is covering this story, relatively few of the major mainstream media have covered it. From The Washington Examiner: 

The CEO of Reddit [Steve Huffman] has admitted that he edited comments in a pro-Trump discussion board, saying he "messed with" some of the comments "for about an hour," and has apologized. 

The Reddit users, known as "redditors," were already seething this week when the site that describes itself as "the front page of the Internet" banned the "Pizzagate" discussion board, where a conspiracy theory was being floated about Hillary Clinton running a pedophilia ring. Pizzagate went down due to a violation of "content policy" after users began posting the personal information of real people who were tied into the theory, like a pizza restaurant owner in Washington, after which they reportedly received death threats. . . . .

But redditors using the popular pro-Trump subreddit called "r/The_Donald" seemed particularly upset with what they viewed as unnecessary censorship, and slung a flurry of disparaging comments in Huffman's direction. Examples of the insults included "fuck u/spez," a play off his Reddit username u/spez. Others called him a "cuck," which is a word, popularized in the alt-right, that accuses one of showing weakness and which has racist undertones. . . . .

Obama reportedly used pseudonym to email Hillary Clinton on her private email server

President Obama apparently used a pseudonym to hide his emails with Hillary Clinton on her private server.  Given that almost everything that the president sends out is considered classified, using the pseudonym may have been done to hide that he was involved in committing a crime.

President Obama used a pseudonym when sending or receiving emails through the private server system Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state, according to nearly 200 pages of documents released Friday by the FBI. 

Included in the documents are notes from an April 2016 interview with long-time Clinton aide Huma Abedin, conducted in connection with the FBI’s two-year investigation into Clinton’s use of the private server for official correspondence. 

One note was about the FBI showing Abedin an email address “believed to be a pseudonym used by the President,” as reported by Politico and other news-gathering agencies. 

Abedin said she didn’t recognize the name and “expressed her amazement” that Obama apparently used a pseudonym. 

She also exclaimed, “How is this not classified?” according to the documents. . . .

federal lawyers will not release the emails, citing executive privilege. . . .

Another interesting story that came up recently was Chelsea Clinton use of the pseudonym "Diane Reynolds" in her emails.  Possibly the most famous exchange between Chelsea and Hillary involved discussing the Benghazi attack.

The Washington Post explains why famous people might legitimately want to use pseudonyms to protect their privacy.  

How does the alias-at-a-hotel system work? Fake names are as useful to protect against staff as against the outside world, Danger pointed out, writing: "Staff is trained and required to sign confidentially agreements about guests overall, but when it's really big name sometimes they can get excited and forget." But why does it matter? Paparazzi, for one. "Paps often try to pay line-level hotel employees for inside info (room numbers, etc)," Danger said. "Leaking that info was a fireable offense at our property." 

It's not only to shield celebrities from the paparazzi, but from stalkers, those horrible people from the media, and other guests. Or political opponents, according to Carlos. "We have had members of royal families who don’t want anyone to know where they are for political reasons." Clearly it is not the case that Chelsea Clinton is from a royal family and wouldn't want to be seen in Ottumwa, Iowa for political reasons.

Yet another Obama administration official uses pseudonym in work emails: Eric Holder aka Lew Alcindor

Eric Holder joins Lisa Jackson, Lois Lerner, Obama administration in gun control push, Labor Department officials, and many others in the administration in using a pseudonym in emails and Twitter to hide their identity.  Obviously, Hillary Clinton hid here information from Freedom of Information Act requests in other ways.  From Fox News:

Former Attorney General Eric Holder not only used an email alias to conduct formal agency business, but appropriated the birth name of one of his idols, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, according to the Department of Justice. 

“I was floored,” said investigative journalist Jason Leopold, who received a batch of “heavily redacted” documents through a FOIA lawsuit this week. At the top was a letter, announcing that “emails in the enclosed documents which use the account name ‘Lew Alcindor’ (Abdul-Jabbar) denote emails to or from Attorney General Eric Holder.” 

“It was incredible,” said Leopold, who was seeking DOJ emails regarding a request for the agency to open a probe into charges that the CIA had been spying on the Senate intelligence committee staff. Leopold broke the story about the bizarre Holder-Alcindor alias for VICE News on Thursday. 

“People may say, ‘what’s the big deal?’ but this is so important,” Leopold tells FoxNews.com. He insists that using an alias might complicate document searches, pointing out that the emails he received don’t even mention Holder’s name. 

“It raises the question of whether they are trying to thwart public records requests and the Federal Records Act. It just seems shady.” . . .

Yet another Obama administration official using a pseudonym to hide email accounts, Lois Lerner follows Lisa Jackson and many other Obama officials

Lisa Jackson and many others at the EPA used a pseudonym to hide their identities.  In Jackson's case, she pretended to be a man, Richard Windsor, who actually won real awards granted by the EPA.  Now it turns out that Lois Lerner also disguised herself as a guy to hide her emails from prying eyes. The Washington Times reports:

. . . “In addition to emails to or from an email account denominated ‘Lois G. Lerner‘ or ‘Lois Home,’ some emails responsive to Judicial Watch’s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated ‘Toby Miles,’” Mr. Klimas told Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is hearing the case. 

It is unclear who Toby Miles is, but Mr. Klimas said the IRS has concluded that was “a personal email account used by Lerner.” . . .

The EPA scandal takes a new turn with crucial EPA losing text messages missing

Remember the scandal where the EPA was accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests -- allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.  The Obama administration has done what it always does.  Delay, delay, delay, and then say that the information has been destroyed and that all this is old news.  Of course, this isn't the first time that the EPA has tried to hide information.  EPA administrator Lisa Jackson resigned over emails that she tried to hide under a pseudonym.  From Fox News:

The EPA is being accused of pulling “an IRS” for reportedly planning to inform the National Archives it has lost text messages being sought in an open-records request. 

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that lawyers from the Department of Justice informed a federal court of the EPA’s plans to tell the National Archives it cannot produce the text messages because they have been deleted. 

The open-records request in question came from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is seeking text messages from the devices of EPA administrator Gina McCarthy.
Christopher Horner, a senior fellow for the institute, told FoxNews.com in a statement it is clear the EPA has not learned from the IRS’ mistakes. . . .

“Here we see EPA agreeing to the court to 'do an IRS', which is to say: notify the National Archivist of the loss of every one of Gina McCarthy's thousands of text messages we have discovered she destroyed, just as the IRS finally agreed to notify (the National Archives) about the emails lost from (former IRS official) Lois Lerner's destroyed hard drive,” he said. “The IRS's insincere efforts at following through on Federal Records Act obligations drew the court's ire – the same court now hearing the EPA case.  Taxpayers should rightly expect EPA to have learned the proper lesson from the IRS's experience and hope for better.” . . .

the [EPA] argued that text messages are personal and therefore do not have to be stored as part of the agency's official record as required by law. . . .

More on former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson bypassing FOIA requests

Horner has almost no chance of winning this case, but it shows the lengths she probably has gone to to hide information.  From Politico:

A conservative gadfly who has made a crusade of uncovering embarrassing emails at the Environmental Protection Agency wants to tap a new potential evidence trove: the National Security Agency’s electronic snooping program.
Attorney Chris Horner has filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking the NSA to turn over any information it might have gleaned from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s personal Verizon email account. The data could buttress critics’ accusations that Jackson and other top environmental regulators have routinely used private channels to discuss public business. . . .
Horner’s transparency crusade has already created some uncomfortable moments for the EPA, most notably by revealing the existence of a secondary EPA email account in which Jackson used the name “Richard Windsor.” Top Republican lawmakers have seized on Horner’s results to back up their own accusations that EPA leaders systematically bypass FOIA’s requirements by using unpublicized or private email accounts to discuss policy with political friends and environmentalists. . . .

Anthony Weiner used pen name in internet chat rooms

From the Washington Post:

In an extraordinary news conference Tuesday beside his wife, Huma Abedin, Weiner confirmed an account on the gossip site the Dirty, which reported a series of explicit conversations and lewd photos that the former congressman exchanged with a young woman, all apparently under the nom de plume Carlos Danger. Weiner, who resigned from office when his habit of tweeting dirty selfies became public two years ago, has repeatedly stated that other such digital indiscretions could surface, a point he made again Tuesday evening. But as his wife looked on, he also confirmed that some of those erotic messages were sent after his resignation from Congress, and well into his redemption tour, including after a July 2012 People magazine article in which Abedin said that Weiner had spent “every day” since the scandal working to be the “best dad and husband” possible. . . .

"JK Rowling publishes crime novel under false name"

Obviously it was a bit of a fudge to claim that the book was based on a military veteran's "own experiences and those of his military colleagues."  From the UK Guardian:

. . . "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience," she said. "It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name." 

The book, about a war veteran turned private investigator called Cormoran Strike, and described by the publisher as based on [the author's] "own experiences and those of his military colleagues", has sold 1,500 copies in hardback since it was released in April. 

Also showering praise on the book was another crime writer, Mark Billingham, who described Strike as "one of the most compelling detectives I've come across in years". . . .

The NY Times provides some fairly sympathetic treatment for Rowling do this here:

. . . In one of the great publishing coups in recent years, “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” which has sold just 1,500 copies in Britain so far, turns out to have been written not by an ex-British Army officer, or by a new writer, or even by a man. Instead, its author is J. K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter novels have made her one of the world’s best-selling, and best-known, authors.Ms. Rowling was unmasked by The Sunday Times of London, which, acting on an anonymous tip, embarked on a sleuthing mission of its own and published the result on Sunday. In the article, Ms. Rowling confessed to the ruse and spoke somewhat wistfully of her brief, happy foray into anonymous authorship. . . .
Many best-selling authors like to write under pseudonyms, particularly when they venture into new genres. The Irish novelist John Banville, a Man Booker Prize winner, publishes detective novels under the name Benjamin Black. Anne Rice has written erotic fiction as A. N. Roquelaure. Early in his career, Stephen King published several novels using the name Richard Bachman. . . .
First he did some Internet detective work, finding many similarities between “The Casual Vacancy” and “The Cuckoo’s Calling.” Both books shared the same agent, publisher and editor in Britain, for example. It seemed particularly odd, he said, that the editor, David Shelley, would be in charge of both someone as important as J. K. Rowling — a very big job, indeed — and someone as seemingly unimportant as Robert Galbraith.He then started reading the book. “I said, ‘Nobody who was in the Army and now works in civilian security could write a book as good as this,’ ” he said. Next, he sent copies of “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” “The Casual Vacancy” and the last Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” to a pair of computer linguistic experts, who found significant similarities among them.Mr. Brooks, too, noted that “The Cuckoo’s Calling” contained some Latin phrases, as the Harry Potter books do, and that it had scenes of drug taking, as “The Casual Vacancy” does. . . . 

Obama Scandals number #5 and #6 just since the presidential election

As Glenn Reynolds described four of them this way: journalist-snooping scandal, IRS scandal, Benghazi, and the Sebelius Shakedown.  Of course, all this ignores Fast and Furious and some other earlier scandals.  I am just counting the scandals that have come to light since the presidential election.

Now there are two other new scandals:

1) The EPA

. . . The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests -- allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones. . . .
Research by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, claims that the political bias is routine when it comes to deciding which groups are charged fees. Christopher Horner, senior fellow at CEI, said liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, in contrast with conservative groups that it claims are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
"The idea is to throw hurdles in our way," charged Horner, who says he decided to look into the fee structure after the EPA repeatedly turned down his group for waivers. . . .

This reminds one of the waivers that the Obama administration gave out for Obamacare.  If the Obama administration is giving conservatives a hard time with these fees, how hard of a time do you think that the administration has given conservatives with respect to their regulatory decisions?

2)  Secret email accounts for top Obama officials

There has been the recent secret emails by Lisa Jackson at the EPA to avoid reporting requirements (see here, here, and here).  But now the AP reports that this desire to skirt the law apparently covers many other many Obama appointments.

Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses. . . .
The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged - but often happens anyway - due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.
"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."
Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS . . .

Drive perceptions that "government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions"?  Seriously, just the perceptions.  Lisa Jackson denied even having this alternative account.  Her real mistake was using an EPA email account.  If she hadn't used this, it might never have been discovered.  How would one even know how many additional email accounts that these officials might have?  The AP can't even get information on the number of these accounts.

UPDATE: Here is a note that Politico has.

Agency spokespeople generally assert that such alias accounts are searched when the public, law enforcement or Congress asks for information, but some experts doubt they are consistently searched or will be after officials leave. . . .

Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's fictional alter ego "Richard Windsor" received multiple awards

From the Washington Times:

Richard Windsor never existed at the EPA, but the agency awarded the fictional staffer’s email account certificates proving he had mastered all of the agency’s technology training — including declaring him a “scholar of ethical behavior,” according to documents disclosed late last week. . . .
The new records show the Windsor account was awarded certificates showing he has “satisfactorily competed the online email records management training”; took the 2010 “No FEAR Act Training Module”; and a completed a “Cybersecurity awareness training” course in 2011, where he scored 83 percent.
Windsor was also awarded the “scholar of ethical behavior” each year from 2010 through 2012. The only training Ms. Jackson appears to have done under her own name was for cybersecurity awareness in 2010. . . .

Apparently Cass Sunstein, who is now at Harvard Law School and was the ORIA director who dealt with EPA regulations, knew that Jackson was using this fake email address.  The Lisa H. below is obviously Jackson, so Cass is clearly playing along with her in pretending that Richard was a real person. 

Vitter also released emails showing that Jackson used the account to correspond with White House officials. “I have your special email from my friend Lisa H. — hope that’s okay!)” Cass Sunstein, then-White House Information and Regulatory Affairs administrator, wrote Jackson in 2009. . . .

Pennsylvania Democratic State Representative Jesse White uses fake internet names to attack those supporting tracking

From Fox News:

A state legislator accused of using fake names to attack supporters of fracking says he's sorry.
An investigation by Pittsburgh TV station KDKA concluded that Pennsylvania Democratic Representative Jesse White used several different names to post harsh comments about supporters of natural gas drilling.
The comments targeted two specific supporters -- calling them "trolls," "moles", and "dumber than a box of rocks."
The posts even identified one opponent's farm and encouraged people to boycott his products.
The website where the posts were made traced all the names back to White's legislative e-mail address.
Yesterday, White posted a statement on his Facebook page apologizing for what he calls an error in judgment. . . .

UPDATE: More stories here and here.


White initially denied the accusations and then refused to answer questions for a while before the evidence got so overwhelming that he eventually admitted what he had done.


A Fox News video is available here.

The Hill newspaper: "Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control"? Apparently Obama's former digital strategist, Brad Schenck is involved

Obama's former digital strategist, Brad Schenck is apparently involved in the use of the pseudonym's.  From The Hill newspaper:

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," [Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)] said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign." 

Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people. 

"The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist. . . . .

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson resigns over apparent content of emails written under pseudonym

Apparently, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson as well as the Obama administration has not admitted that the reason for her leaving the administration has anything to do with the emails that she sent out using a pseudonym.  What may have caused her concern is not the fact that she sent out these emails using a pseudonym but apparently the content of the emails.  Obama praised Jackson, but did not criticize her in anyway for her email activity.  Her use of these emails would at least seem to break Obama's promise of transparency, and that promise appears to have been further broken by Obama not admitting that the emails served as the reason for her leaving.  From Fox News:

A Washington attorney suing the Obama administration for access to alias emails sent by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that a recent decision by the Justice Department to release thousands of those emails next month contributed to her resigning Thursday.
Jackson, in a brief written statement, said Thursday she is leaving the EPA after four years on the job, for "new challenges, time with my family and new opportunities to make a difference."
The agency did not offer an explanation. But Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the scrutiny over the alias emails is clearly a factor.
"Life's full of coincidences, but this is too many," he told FoxNews.com. "She had no choice."
Horner and CEI earlier this year had sued the EPA for documents pertaining to Jackson's use of alias email accounts. She was said to operate under the name "Richard Windsor" -- the use of those accounts has since drawn the scrutiny of Republican members of Congress, as well as triggered an audit by the EPA inspector general. . . .

Use of false email address "triggered an inadvertent ruckus" for head of EPA

Does this sound like Politico is running interference for the Obama administration?  Could the Obama administration please explain how this fits in with his pledge of transparency?

EPA officials say the agency wasn’t trying to hide anything by giving Administrator Lisa Jackson a secondary email address to use when corresponding with other government officials. 

But the name she chose to use — “Richard Windsor” — has triggered an inadvertent ruckus for an agency already under fire from conservatives. 

The name came from that of a family dog when Jackson lived in East Windsor Township, N.J., an EPA official said Tuesday. 

The seemingly cryptic name has spawned a host of accusatory news reports and questions from lawmakers in recent days, all of them implying that Jackson was trying to dodge congressional oversight and public records laws by using a “private” email account under a fake name. . . .

A related story is available from The Hill newspaper here:

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) accused the Obama administration on Tuesday of shielding possible discussions on a carbon tax from the public. 

Vitter, a top Republican on the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner alleging the administration is hammering out details for a carbon tax proposal. 

Vitter questioned Treasury’s denial of a Freedom of Information Act request from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank. The think tank sued Treasury last week for not releasing emails from the agency’s Office of Energy and Environment that contained the word “carbon.” . . . 

Did Obama EPA department hide information by using private email accounts?

Could it be used to legally challenge the regulations that are issued if it implies that the proper process wasn't used to implement regulations?  So will the Obama administration speak out on whether they disapprove of this activity?  From The Hill:

Republicans on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee have launched a probe into whether Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson has been conducting official business using secret email accounts.The lawmakers said the practice may violate transparency and record-keeping laws. . . .
"The use of these accounts could seriously impair records collection, preservation, and access, therefore compromising transparency and oversight," the Republicans wrote in a letter to Jackson.
The lawmakers demanded that Jackson turn over all records related to "Richard Windsor" and all other aliases used by senior EPA officials. . . .