Michael Peevey, Michael Florio, Stephen Pickett

Previously undisclosed emails between Southern California Edison and the California Public Utilities Commission, received this week by San Diego attorney Mike Aguirre, reveal that there was a post-Warsaw huddle not long after former commission president Michael Peevey returned from the now-famous clandestine meeting of March 2013. Aguirre got the documents under the California Public Records Act.

As previously revealed by local media, Peevey sketched an outline of a settlement by which ratepayers would get stuck with $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion costs of decommissioning the San Onofre nuclear plant. Edison executive Stephen Pickett met with Peevey in Warsaw, but the company did not reveal the meeting, as required by CPUC rules, until much later.

It appears Edison energy division director Edward Randolph was on the Warsaw trip, although it is not clear that he was in on the secret meeting with Pickett and Peevey.

Peevey is now under state and federal criminal investigation. It is against CPUC rules for a commissioner to try and influence a decision before it comes before a commission vote. In this case, the commission ultimately approved the plan, which was similar to what Peevey sketched out.

Now, a key email has surfaced.

On March 31, 2013, Edison's Randolph emailed Michael Florio, then the commissioner in charge of the case. Said Randolph: "Commissioner Peevey asked me to set up a meeting with him for you and me next Thursday after the commission meeting. (We were both having email problems in Poland so he asked me to set it up when I got back.) He suggest[s] lunch or dinner (but I need to be in Sacto late in the day). For now Commissioner Peevey would like to keep this meeting to just the three of us. I am happy to come by to explain the topic in person (or on the phone). Can we make something work for Thursday?"

Florio, who was later removed as commissioner on the case, replied to Randolph's March 31 email, "Lunch would be fine. THANKS and welcome back!"

Florio has claimed that he didn't hear about the settlement plan until it was announced. He has stuck with that story to the U-T, suggesting that he doesn't remember what was discussed at the post-Warsaw huddle with Peevey and Randolph — but is certain it was not about the March 2013 secret Warsaw huddle.

The new batch of emails Aguirre received has other eyebrow-arching items — one of them an email in which Peevey exults that Wall Street approves the settlement. (Of course Wall Street loved it. It barely nicked shareholders and put the burden on ratepayers, who had nothing to do with the management errors that led to the shutdown.)

(corrected 6/27, 5:55 a.m.)