Oil giant ExxonMobil asked a federal court on Monday to block a climate change investigation led by Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into the company, arguing that the probe is based on a political agenda and should be deemed illegal.
The petition, filed in a federal district court in Texas, is the latest in the company’s pushback in the courts against both Schneiderman and Maura Healey, the Massachusetts AG, who are leading an investigation into the company’s record on climate change.
The state AGs had subpoenaed the company over the past year requesting 40-years-worth of emails and documents related to climate change. The effort is meant to build a case against Exxon based on news reports that it covered up its own scientists’ findings from the 1970s, which showed climate change would harm its business.
Schneiderman hopes to demonstrate that by not disclosing the findings to its shareholders, as well as to the public, the company committed fraud.
Monday’s court filing targeted Schneiderman’s investigation, amending an earlier petition to “invalidate” a separate probe initiated by Healey.
“Attorney General Schneiderman has publicly accused ExxonMobil of engaging in a ‘massive securities fraud’ without any basis whatsoever, and Attorney General Healey declared, before her investigation even began, that she knew how it would end: with a finding that ExxonMobil violated the law,” according to the complaint filed Monday in the Texas court.
“The improper political bias that inspired the New York and Massachusetts investigations disqualifies Attorneys General Schneiderman and Healey from serving as the disinterested prosecutors required by the Constitution,” the company added.
Exxon explained in its filing that it had cooperated with the New York climate probe since last year, and has turned over more than 1 million pages of documents.
“However, increasingly political and biased statements by Schneiderman and his office — as well as revelations from third-party disclosures about secret and deliberately concealed collaboration with anti-oil and gas activists and a private law firm — have confirmed that he and Healey are incapable of impartial investigations and are attempting to silence political opponents who disagree on the appropriate policies to address climate change,” the company explained in a statement.
The company refutes the accusations that it attempted to bury data from its own scientists over the harm posed by climate change, while saying it supports efforts to combat climate change. Yet a press conference led by Schneiderman with former Vice President Al Gore in March illustrated that the probe into the oil firm was based on a “bias” assessment of the company’s actions, it explained in the filing.
It added that through freedom of information disclosures released ahead of the Gore press conference, it was found that the attorneys general “were secretly briefed by Matthew Pawa, a lawyer who has unsuccessfully sued oil and gas companies over climate change, and Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist organization that has been targeting ExxonMobil for nearly a decade,” according to Exxon.
These disclosures provide evidence of the political basis for the probes, and the need for the state AGs to keep these private meetings out of the public’s view while conducting the climate investigation.
“Frumhoff and Pawa have sought for years to initiate and promote litigation against fossil fuel companies in the service of their political agenda and for private profit,” the filing reads.
“The attorneys general in attendance at the press conference understood that the participation of Frumhoff and Pawa, if reported, could expose the private, financial and political interests behind the announced investigations,” according to Exxon’s complaint.
“The day after the conference, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal contacted Pawa. Before responding, Pawa dutifully asked [the] Chief of Attorney General Schneiderman’s Environmental Protection Bureau, ‘[w]hat should I say if she asks if I attended?’ [The Chief] — the [same] Assistant Attorney General who had sent the New York subpoena to ExxonMobil in November 2015 — encouraged Pawa to conceal from the press and the public the closed-door meetings,” according to the complaint filed Monday. The assistant attorney general responded to Pawa, saying ‘[m]y ask is if you speak to the reporter, to not confirm that you attended or otherwise discuss the event.'”
Last week, a federal judge in Massachusetts acted on a separate complaint filed by the company against Healey, which is being called a win for Exxon. The company managed to convince the judge to begin his own jurisdictional inquiry into whether Healey’s investigation was politically motivated. The action by the court is the first step in potentially leveling an injunction against Healey.
