New Lawsuit: Have Secretary Sonny Perdue's ties to Georgia agricultural-interest groups affected federal policy? We’re suing USDA to release Perdue's emails and other records to find out: americanoversight.org/new-lawsuit-se…
Perdue entered office with a complicated network of ties with Georgia-based entities, including Perdue Partners and AGrowStar, which has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest as secretary.
The agency has yet to turn over records of Perdue's communications with his family's business. We're asking for emails and communications with Perdue Partners and other outside interests — including emails sent from a personal account.
The public has a right to know if the secretary is working on behalf of his family's businesses and his home state. We obtained his 2017 calendars, which show that he traveled to Georgia 13 times in his first six months — often on the taxpayers' dime: documentcloud.org/documents/5011…
The records also show that on his first day on the job he had a meeting with the Georgia Farm Bureau, which included his cousin, Georgia Senator David Perdue: documentcloud.org/documents/5011… 
Perdue isn’t the only Trump cabinet official who’s faced questions about putting home state interests first. From Elaine Chao and Kentucky to Mike Pompeo and Kansas (or even Scott Pruitt and Oklahoma) there is a troubling pattern of Trump appointees favoring their home states.
This isn't our first lawsuit against USDA. We also want to know if Secretary Sonny Perdue has been honoring his ethics pledge and whether his cousin, Sen. David Perdue, has had inappropriate influence on USDA policy: americanoversight.org/document/compl…
