October 29, 2019: Now that Scott Pruitt is gone, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is making a strong case to be the next corrupt official to be run out of the Trump administration. Sierra Club's resistance to Zinke will rely in large part on the Freedom of Information Act, a law that even Mitch McConnell can't jettison. Sierra Club sued the Department of Interior in early 2018 for failing to respond to its Freedom of Information Act requests for the external communications (emails, texts, etc.) of Secretary Zinke, Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt and other high level political staff with a history of advocating for industry instead of the public interest. As a result of this lawsuit, Sierra Club has received hundreds of pages of calendars and emails not previously public. When Interior ignored Sierra Club's request to prioritize Zinke and Bernhadt's documents in its rolling productions, our attorneys pressed the Court to require this of the agency and were successful. Interior is now under an order to produce 750 pages per month from Zinke and 100 pages per month from Bernhardt. The parties are continuing negotiations about the pace of production and priority documents. We will not rest while Zinke and his cronies open up precious public lands to the oil and gas industry. Sierra Club is represented in this case pro bono by Ellen Richmond of Conrad & Metlitzky LLP and by Elena Saxonhouse of Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program.