Federal prosecutors across the nation are pausing criminal prosecutions against diesel emissions “delete” mechanics, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
That followed an internal U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) memo that also orders federal prosecutors to drop preexisting criminal cases targeting the sale of “defeat devices,” CBS News reported.
The DOJ “is exercising its enforcement discretion to no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices in motor vehicles,” says a Wednesday post to X by the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division.
The agency will still pursue civil delete enforcement “when appropriate,” the post concludes.
Though the CBS News story on the memo issued Wednesday by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says the memo is about cases involving the sale of delete devices, the memo appears also to include tampering.
That’s according to Interim U.S. District Attorney for Wyoming Darin Smith.
Smith declined to give Cowboy State Daily the memo, but confirmed that it is broad enough on its face to include delete cases generally.
“There might be some nuances,” said Smith. “But that would be consistent with where the DOJ is headed, and where this office has already gone.”
Smith in November became possibly the first federal prosecutor to drop a case against a delete mechanic, Levi Krech, who was raised in Gillette.
“I’m certain that the DOJ is — in their position — consistent with not just the spirit of the Clean Air Act but also the letter of the law,” said Smith. “These are not criminal violations.”
But First, Troy Lake
The DOJ’s maneuver follows Trump’s Nov. 7 pardon of Wyoming delete mechanic Troy Lake, a 65-year-old man who spent seven months in federal prison and several weeks on an ankle monitor for tampering with emissions systems.
Before he was pardoned, Lake expected to remain a convicted felon for life, he has said.
“Sounds like they’re admitting that they did wrong, I guess,” Lake told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
Lake’s case garnered national headlines and the efforts of Wyoming’s Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis. She pushed for his pardon and asserted he’d been a victim of Biden-era “weaponization” of the justice system.
The Big Delete Universe
Other cases have pushed for change in this area as well.
One of those involves Tracy Coiteux, a repair shop co-owner from Washington state convicted of a felony.
She fought her Clean Air Act case in federal court with what CBS news called “an untested legal theory that runs counter to conclusions reached by both federal prosecutors and attorneys for the Environmental Protection Agency.”
Dating back to the tail-end of the Biden administration, Coiteux’s argument cites a lack of historical precedent within the EPA for strapping criminal remedies to the part of the Clean Air Act that addresses mobile emissions sources.
“They instead referenced only civil penalties for tampering with vehicle emission control systems,” says Coiteux’s June 5, 2024, filing on the matter in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington.
Toward the end of the first Trump administration, the EPA advanced a new memo “suggesting federal criminal law might apply to tampering of monitoring devices on vehicles,” continued Coiteux’s attorney Phil Brennan in the filing.
Brennan added: “This noteworthy change arose 30 years after the last changes to the Clean Air Act (CAA) in 1990, and more than a decade after (on-board diagnostics systems) were required to be installed on light duty trucks in 2008.”
For Coiteux, Brennan argued that that “novel interpretation” lacked support in the law and sprang an unexpected legal twist on mechanics.
U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle rejected Coiteux’s argument with the words, “The Court disagrees.”
“The EPA has discretion to engage in a civil enforcement, criminal enforcement, or both for the challenged conduct under the CAA,” added the judge.
Meanwhile In Court
The DOJ’s Wednesday directive could potentially impact more than a dozen pending criminal cases nationally and around 20 ongoing investigations, CBS news reported via “two sources familiar with the matter and court filings.”
Multiple pending criminal cases, including two in Pennsylvania, were filed via indictment last year while Trump was in office, the outlet added.
Krech’s case also was officially filed last year, though he told Cowboy State Daily the federal government had been investigating him for years prior and that federal agents raided his shop in April 2022.
Emissions mandates escalated under President Barack Obama’s administration as an attempt to stifle emissions. Under President Joe Biden, criminal emissions cases tied to deletes increased exponentially.
Because, Emissions
The EPA in late 2020 finalized a study saying it expected 550,000 diesel pickup trucks deleted between 2009 and 2020 to emit more than 570,000 tons of excess oxides of nitrogen and 5,000 tons of particulate matter.
On the other hand, multiple trucking business owners have told Cowboy State Daily that the emissions systems now affixed to diesels break down frequently, crippling trucks and wreaking excruciating losses on small business owners especially.
Lake has theorized that if the EPA works with mechanics instead of pushing for their prosecution, the U.S. can develop better systems to stifle emissions.
Ryan LaLone, a delete mechanic who was convicted of felony conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act in February 2024, echoed that in a Wednesday phone interview.
“We sent four (deleted) trucks to California for testing they all four passed (California Air Resources Board) testing,” said LaLone, adding that the EPA in 2019 didn’t care. “They wouldn’t even look at my tests.”
LaLone is now pushing for a presidential pardon.
“I’m a felon over this bullshit, and I haven’t even had a speeding ticket in 29 years,” he said. “What happened to me was wrong.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
