President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team has reportedly been asking for the names of civil servants that have worked on environmental policies under President Barack Obama, sparking fears of a coming “climate purge” by the incoming Trump administration.
A “document circulated by the Energy Department,” first reported by Bloomberg Thursday and later by Politico, lists 65 questions posed by the transition team. Some sought specific information on “employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules,” Bloomberg reported.
“Sounds like a freaking witch hunt,” a former Energy staffer said in an email to Politico.
“Why is that important for informing the transition team?” a current Department of Energy (DOE) staffer told the news outlet, adding that “some [of the questions] are harassment, some are naïve, some are legitimate.”