Consulting Firm Whose Staff Scoured E.P.A. Employees’ Emails Loses Media Contract

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WASHINGTON — A consulting firm has pulled out of a federal contract to provide media monitoring services to the Environmental Protection Agency after it was disclosed that a lawyer among its top executives had been investigating agency employees critical of the Trump administration.

Joe Pounder, the president of Definers Public Affairs, said in a statement on Twitter that his company’s $120,000 contract with the E.P.A., which it was awarded this month, had become a “distraction.”

The contract came under scrutiny because of the company’s links to America Rising, a Virginia-based corporation and Republican political operation with several offshoots that have investigated E.P.A. officials. One lawyer on the company’s staff, Allan Blutstein, sent a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to the E.P.A. asking for email correspondence by employees who had been publicly critical of the Trump administration’s management of the agency.

America Rising and its affiliates also separately deployed “trackers” to videotape climate change activists and produced news releases and videos favorable to Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A.

Definers Public Affairs, a corporate entity, shares multiple top executives with America Rising, including Mr. Pounder. Both he and E.P.A. officials said the contract was solely to monitor and collect news articles and videos that appear about the agency. E.P.A. officials said a need for compiling those news reports was not being met sufficiently by its previous vendor.

But agency employees — particularly those who had been targeted by America Rising after they raised questions about the management of Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. — said they were fearful the new contract might translate into increased surveillance of agency staff.

E.P.A. officials and Mr. Pounder disputed that suggestion.

“Definers offered E.P.A. a better and more efficient news clipping service that would give E.P.A.’s employees real-time news at a lower cost than what previous administrations paid for more antiquated clipping services,” Mr. Pounder said. “But it’s become clear this will become a distraction. As a result, Definers and the E.P.A. have decided to forgo the contract.”

Mr. Pounder also said on Twitter that other government agencies had expressed interest in his company’s services, but said his firm would no longer work with the federal government.

Contract documents show that Definers — which on its website lists its founder, president and top partner — applied to the E.P.A. as a “disadvantaged business,” a status that can give a bidder preference as it pursues a federal contract.

Asked about this filing, Mr. Pounder said that it was a computer error, and that the company recently corrected its status in the federal contracting system to make clear that it was not a “disadvantaged business.”

An E.P.A. spokesman said that Definers did not receive any benefit as a result of the original disadvantaged status claim.

The move to drop the contract came after a liberal nonprofit group, Public Citizen, filed a formal protest late Monday with the Government Accountability Office saying that Definers had illegally been granted the deal. Public Citizen cited contract records indicating that no other bidders had been considered. The protest was filed on behalf of two other companies that offer similar services to the ones that Definers had been hired to deliver.

“Federal law establishes that full and open competition is the standard means for contracting,” the protest letter said.

Jahan Wilcox, an E.P.A. spokesman, declined to say why the agency had listed the contract as a sole-source notification, with Definers as the intended recipient.

He noted that the agency publicly announced the no-bid contract on federal websites, as is required, so that other vendors could have the opportunity to apply. One other company responded, E.P.A. officials said, and Definers was chosen for the job. Mr. Wilcox did not identify the other company.

“How we consume the news has changed, and we hope to find a vendor that can provide us with real-time news clips at a rate that is cheaper than our previous vendor,” he said.

Separately, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, sent a letter on Tuesday to Mr. Pruitt, urging him to move on his own to cancel the contract.

Mr. Whitehouse said that America Rising Squared, a dark-money, nonprofit partner of Definers, set up a website this year pushing the Senate to confirm Mr. Pruitt. He said the firm also has conducted an elaborate surveillance operation tracking climate activists critical of the Trump administration, including Tom Steyer, the liberal billionaire donor, and sought to gather emails of E.P.A. employees who questioned Mr. Pruitt’s actions and policy.

“E.P.A.’s contract with Definers risks further politicizing the agency and is another instance of E.P.A. under your tenure becoming captured by the industry it regulates,” Mr. Whitehouse wrote, citing reporting by The New York Times and Mother Jones, which was the first to disclose the contract award. “At a minimum, it presents an appearance of impropriety to which you as administrator should never be a party. For the reasons that follow, you should terminate this contract immediately.”

Statements by Mr. Pounder that America Rising and Definers are separate entities were simply false, Mr. Whitehouse said in his letter.

“These organizations may have different corporate forms, but we should all be clear that they are merely different parts of the same multifaceted partisan operation,” Mr. Whitehouse wrote. “Any claim they are distinct is a sham.”

Joe Wagner, the managing director of the Washington office of Fenton, a public relations firm that identifies itself as supporting social change and was a party to the protest filed by Public Citizen, said he was glad the contract award had been terminated.

“They should put it out to bid,” he said. “That is standard practice.”