"Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and high-ranking aides held several previously unreported meetings with a Missouri-based electric utility company that EPA claimed in 2011 had been violating the Clean Air Act since the Clinton administration, agency documents show.

The meetings were part of a campaign — repeatedly described by the company,  Associated Electric Cooperative Inc., as "confidential" — to build political support for resolving a series of alleged violations at its Thomas Hill Energy Center, a coal-fired plant in northern Missouri that has been producing power and air pollution since 1966.

One closed-door discussion with AECI in April 2017 was redacted from a detailed Pruitt schedule. A second meeting with the co-op a year later organized by enforcement chief Susan Bodine is unlisted on her public calendar.

The secretive campaign was coordinated with Elizabeth "Tate" Bennett, EPA's head of public engagement, as well as the leaders of state and national electric cooperative trade associations, recently released emails revealed. It also included at least one more high-level meeting between AECI and a top EPA political appointee."

Corbin Hiar reports for Greenwire April 15, 2019. [2]