Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said Tuesday that he supports Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s lawsuit over the federal health care overhaul, but said that Cuccinelli’s demand for information from the University of Virginia regarding climatologist and former UVa. Professor Michael Mann was the attorney general’s call.
“That’s his call – in that case, he’s not representing me,” McDonnell said on WTOP’s monthly “Ask the Governor” program. “It’s not my call.”
But according to former attorney general Jerry Kilgore, the University of Virginia, as a public state school, is actually a client, Mark Plotkin pointed out.
“Attorneys general all the time have issues with their client where they’ve got clients with different interests,” he said.
McDonnell said the request for information, akin to a subpoena, was one that he issued dozens and dozens of times as attorney general to get information on Medicaid fraud cases, for example. Cuccinelli requested documents that he said would show that Mann’s work on climate change was scientifically dubious.
“I did not issue one to any universities during my time; we usually found a way to work things out and get documents produced,” McDonnell said.
“I don’t know all the facts that he’s got – he’s doing it as a representative of [the] people believing that if there was fraud with a federal or a state grant by this professor that he should have redress for the commonwealth,” the governor said. “I just don’t know all the facts about what he has in his possession [because] I’m not his client.”
