Cooper Administration Orders Employees to Stonewall Pipeline Investigators | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's note: This post, by Brian Balfour, was originally published in Civitas's online edition.

    Gov. Roy Cooper has instructed employees of his administration to refuse to speak with investigators looking into his shady dealings surrounding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline deal, according to reports.

    Gov. Roy Cooper's administration has told rank-and-file employees not to speak with private investigators the General Assembly hired to investigate the administration's Atlantic Coast Pipeline dealings.

    Legislators co-chairing an oversight committee on the issue accused the administration Wednesday of "trying to grind this investigation to a halt." The administration said it would still provide testimony in committee.

    Cooper has rightly been accused of having a transparency problem with this issue. We first learned about his administration's questionable dealings when it turned out approval for the pipeline may have been contingent on the pipeline manufacturer forking over $58 million to Cooper's office, to be spent at his discretion. At that time, Cooper and his Department of Environmental Quality refused to show up for a committee hearing in which they could answer questions about this shady deal.

    More recently, evidence has turned up in a search through a "document dump" from Cooper's office that Cooper may have been using the pipeline deal as leverage to seal a deal with Duke Energy to help enrich one of Cooper's buddies in the crony solar business. Which brings us to Cooper's latest gag order of his staffers.

    Something very shady and unethical went down with this pipeline deal, and Cooper is refusing to come clean. What is he trying to hide?