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As discussed yesterday, the pro-coal astroturf American Coalition for Clean-Coal Electricity (ACCCE) stated that it was “outraged” that its contractor, Donner & Associates had forged (oops, that an intern or temp or contract employee, no longer with the group had forged) letters from two minority organizations to Representative Tom Perriello trying to create a (false) appearance of minority opposition to a clean energy future.

In expressing their outrage, ACCCE leadership emphasized that

ACCCE has always maintained high ethical and professional standards.

Well, it turned out that those “high ethical and professional standards” include deciding to sit on the information about the fraud for over a month. In fact, ACCCE internal documents show that they had learned of Donner & Associates’ highly questionable (if not directly illegal) activities no later than 24 June 2009, two days before the House vote on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act.

And, ACCCE made a public statement Donner & Associates activities only on 3 August, Charlottesville Daily Progress broke this story on 3 August.

Now, as for “high ethical and professional standards …”

Don’t know about you, but now I’m the one who is outraged.

PS: The documents now show that false letters were sent to at least three Representatives. And, in addition, there are reports of other similar (if not the same) activities of false letters to other offices. The Congressional and criminal investigations likely will have a lot of letters to search through to try to figure out just how many of the communications to Congress over ACES (and health care) are similarly fraudulent forgeries and misrepresentations.