Cuccinelli targets grants to climate scientist

Cuccinelli, a Republican who is separately suing the federal government over regulation of carbon emissions, issued the school a civil subpoena late last month probing “possible violations” of the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act by the former U.Va. professor. Mann, now a professor at Penn State, is famous for creating the controversial “hockey stick” graph charting a spike in global temperatures.

That law, similar to the Federal False Claims Act, is more commonly used to combat Medicaid fraud, said Zachary Kitts, a Fairfax lawyer and expert on the state law. Cuccinelli, however, has “really sent a message that he’s going to use the statute more than his predecessors,” Kitts said.

The threshold to be sued under Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act is not as high as a fraud case, Kitts said. Essentially, “all you got to do is make a knowingly false statement to get paid with government money,” he said.

Mann was among the scientists accused in the Climategate e-mail scandal of manipulating climate data to support the idea of man-made global warming. A Penn State panel cleared him of scientific misconduct in February.

Cuccinelli’s subpoena mentions five state-funded studies involving the climatologist, who worked at the Virginia university from 1999 to 2005.

Critics of the attorney general accused him of starting a politically driven “witch hunt” against Mann. The subpoena “strikes me as very grasping,” said state Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax.

“He has a constitutional duty to represent the state, represent the taxpayer,” Petersen said. “A lot of this just seem to me agenda-driven.”

Mann could not be reached for comment. The attorney general declined through a spokesman to comment on the probe.

The supoena was first reported by the Hook, a weekly newspaper in Charlottesville.

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