Sen. Elizabeth Warren tried to help a corporation avoid responsibility for the clean up of toxic waste while working as a private attorney.
On Sunday, the Massachusetts Democrat disclosed her client list and earnings from her time as a private attorney, in addition to her work as a legal professor. She earned nearly $2 million while working as a private attorney since 1986, according to the disclosure. This disclosure could haunt her campaign and her anti-corporation persona, according to the Washington Post.
One of the clients she represented while teaching at Harvard Law was CMC Heartland Partners, a real estate firm that had obtained land that had been used to clean out rail cars, spilling oil into the soil. In 1996, she wrote a memo on behalf of the firm, which was owned by Ken Starr of impeachment fame, to the Supreme Court defending CMC against having to clean up the waste, which they say should be the railroad company Union Pacific’s responsibility.
Warren argued that CMC Heartland Partners had a right to “maximize its returns to its unpaid creditors and to survive as an employer” after it was hit with a plethora of lawsuits from people falling ill due to the toxic waste in the soil.
“Environmental claims, product liability claims, and mass tort claims, for which we have currently only seen the tip of the iceberg, are multiplying against American businesses,” she wrote.
Her campaign argued that she was not trying to stop the toxic waste from being cleaned up, but rather she believed the responsibility should fall on the railroad, even though CMC Heartland Partners owned the toxic land. Warren was paid $21,000 for her efforts to help CMC Heartland, which was eventually held responsible for the cleanup.
Richard Cordray, an Ohio politician and Warren supporter, defended the candidate, saying, “It wasn’t like there was going to be nobody responsible for cleaning the place up. It’s just which of two companies was responsible and what percentages.”
Environmentalists, however, said Warren helped perpetuate a tactic used by companies to drag out the clean-up efforts by tying it up in court.
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice founder Lois Gibbs argued, “Every time somebody takes a breath of air or touches soil, they’re getting poisoned while they’re fighting in court. How many lives were changed while they had that fight? How many women weren’t able to carry their baby full term or had a birth defect or had a child that got cancer?”
Beyond CMC Heartland, Warren was also on the payroll of Dow Chemical, a company that developed silicone breast implants that ruptured, as they battled lawsuits from women deformed by their products. She also represented LTV Steel as they tried to overcome lawsuits from a worker’s union after not paying for the healthcare of retired miners.
Warren’s decision to disclose her private legal work followed a spat with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. She demanded that Buttigieg disclose his clients from his time at McKinsey & Co., a management consultant firm. The mayor, in return, demanded Warren release her tax returns and disclose her legal clients. Warren declined to release her tax returns from before 2009.
Buttigieg could not disclose his clients without approval from the firm but is expected to deliver a report on Tuesday.
