‘Dance you monkey, dance’: Biden EPA official took orders from wealthy chemical lobbyist, emails show

A newly released EPA report revealed that the agency’s air chief failed several federal ethics requirements and communicated with lobbyists from companies being regulated.

Joe Goffman, the assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, “failed to assess whether specific parties or industries that were involved posed a potential financial conflict-of-interest,” the inspector general’s report read. Goffman reportedly failed to get an ethics “screen” “and “recuse himself from the matters pending the determination of that screen.”

The report was released this week by Inspector General Sean O’Donnell’s office which did not make any criminal referral to the Justice Department because O’Donnell’s office “did not identify evidence that Goffman’s conduct was willful or that he intended to financially benefit from his participation.”

Text messages reviewed by the Daily Wire showed that on the day President Joe Biden announced he would nominate Goffman to the position in 2022, Goffman texted his thanks to a Democrat donor and lobbyist.

“It’s live,” Goffman wrote to Rich Gold whose firm represented oil and gas companies, the timber industry, and the American Chemistry Council. “Will I ever be able to thank you enough?”

The two continued to communicate as seen in messages obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog group, Functional Government Initiative.

According to the Daily Wire:

Goffman shared intimate information about dynamics within the EPA, and in one case promised to “pull a rabbit out of the hat” for Gold.

In June 2022, Gold complained that Goffman’s staff had cancelled a meeting with the American Forest & Paper Association, which paid Gold $200,000 the year prior. Goffman agreed to undo the cancellation, despite having important business to do that day.

“What do I need to do?” the EPA official asked the lobbyist.

“Dance you monkey, dance,” came the reply. “I”ll be there. With tomatoes.”

“A wide array of people supported Joe Goffman prior to and following his nomination as Assistant Administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation,” EPA spokesman Nick Conger told the outlet. “Mr. Goffman engages regularly with a variety of stakeholders – including those from the regulated community – as part of his work to protect public health and the environment.”

Goffman, who was confirmed as assistant administrator by the Senate in 2023 by a vote of 50-49, also served in the EPA under President Barack Obama. Other conflict-of-interest issues have raised concerns such as when he sold thousands of dollars of shares to Exxon Mobil and three other oil companies just two days after becoming chief of the air office in 2021.

He filed a recusal statement in 2021 that listed 60 companies that he had a financial association with that prevented him from being involved in matters that pertained to them.

Goffman was characterized as a “swamp creature” by the Functional Government Initiative which added that it’s “hard to say which is the more surprising, Mr. Goffman’s willingness to divulge responses from high-ranking agency officials to Mr. Gold” or the “request that Mr. Gold keep him in the loop on what administration officials are saying.”

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Frieda Powers

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.

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