The Democratic attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands is refuting claims that his high-profile climate change investigation that targeted conservative groups violates the Constitution.
The attorney general was responding to a recent court motion by the free-market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, which sought to block the attorney general from targeting CEI and other climate skeptics under his investigation.
CEI says the climate probe violates its First Amendment rights to free speech under the Constitution.
Claude Walker, attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands, subponead CEI earlier in the year as part of an investigation into Exxon Mobil’s decision to withhold data from the public about the harm caused by climate change. CEI had advised Exxon on climate change, and the oil company had provided money to the think tank, according to Walker.
“CEI is wrong that the First Amendment shields CEI or Exxon from cooperating with this lawful investigation,” a legal brief submitted by Walker’s legal team said in response to CEI’s motion for sanctions in D.C. Superior Court late last week. “This is an investigation into whether Exxon committed fraud, and it is well established that the First Amendment does not shield fraud.
“Similar arguments for First Amendment protection were decisively rejected in the United States’ case against tobacco companies, which held cigarette manufacturers financially responsible for and imposed sweeping injunctive relief to address a decades-long scheme by those defendants to misrepresent the scientific facts regarding smoking cigarettes,” Walker’s response added.
Walker asked the court to deny CEI’s request, and saying “CEI has wasted enough of [the Virgin Islands Department of Justice’s] and the court’s limited time and resources with its frivolous … motion.”
CEI President Kent Lassman lashed back at Walker on Monday, and said the response filed late Thursday, just as CEI was holding its annual gala dinner, demonstrates that the attorney general believes he is above the law.
“An attorney general is neither above the law nor out of reach of the D.C. Superior Court,” Lassman said in a statement.
Walker believes that “constitutional abuses are not worth the court’s time,” said Lassman. “As if from a parallel universe where everything is reversed, Walker claims that CEI’s motions in response to overreaching and abusive action initiated by his office are a waste of his time and resources.”
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman says Walker “has only himself to blame.”
Kazman said in a statement: “When you abuse your authority to harass those whose views you dislike, there are going to be consequences. And when courts spend their time examining and sanctioning abuses like Walker’s, abuses which ultimately threaten us all, that is time well spent.”
