On November 16, United States District Judge Ed Kinkeade ordered Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey and New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to be deposed by ExxonMobil lawyers in December. The two are further subject to legal discovery from ExxonMobil’s legal team. These are extraordinary things to demand of such prominent public officials; but then again, it appears they have committed extraordinary abuses of their offices.
Healey, Schneiderman, and other Democratic attorneys general have been pursuing a radical legal strategy of trying to charge energy companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law designed to take down mobsters. And all because energy companies haven’t completely subjugated themselves to the policy agenda of climate-change activists.
Requiring discovery and depositions from Healey and Schneiderman represents a remarkable turning of the tables. The two AGs have been trying to compel ExxonMobil to cough up decades’ worth of records, a wide-netted fishing expedition looking for ways to pressure the company politically and legally.
Judge Kinkeade is now entertaining the idea that Healey and Schneiderman might just have inappropriate political motivations. And as it turns out, there’s a lot of evidence suggesting that politics, not law enforcement, is driving the efforts against ExxonMobil. Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute has been dogged in obtaining and cataloging public records demonstrating as much.
One such record is a letter sent in March from Schneiderman and Vermont attorney general William Sorrell to fellow state law enforcers encouraging them to be active in the “informal coalition of Attorneys General” pushing for “the adoption of stronger federal climate and energy policies.” The letter calls for “ensuring that the promises made in Paris become reality,” referring to the Paris climate accord. Never mind that the Paris agreement is a nonbinding nontreaty that is nonenforceable (at least as far as federal law is concerned): What business is it of a state attorney general to use his or her office to promote energy policy? And yet, Schneiderman and Sorrell are explicit in stating that the goal of the AG coalition is “to stem climate change and expand the availability and usage of renewable energy.”
Judge Kinkeade also took note of an email in which Schneiderman’s office tells an “outside advisor”—environmental lawyer/activist Matthew Pawa—to mislead a reporter about his role in their efforts. Records documenting the AGs’ coordination with outside political and environmental groups are extensive. But obtaining these public records hasn’t been easy, according to Horner, who writes that the AGs and their allies have responded to public-record requests with a coordinated campaign of “widespread foot-dragging.” For all their stalling, the activists’ agenda has been hiding in plain sight. Interviewed by the Nation in 2015, Pawa encouraged bringing racketeering lawsuits because passing climate change laws had proved too hard: “Legislation is going nowhere,” Pawa said, “so litigation could potentially play an important role.”
Schneiderman and Healey originally tried to get nearly 20 AGs to sign on to their climate crusade, but now they’ve been largely abandoned. The ExxonMobil probe is collapsing and deservedly so.
The witch-hunt against ExxonMobil may offer an explanation, at least in part, of the liberal hysteria at the prospect of a Trump administration: pure projection. The left abuses the power of its offices for political purposes and naturally assumes its opponents do the same.
It’s a good idea to stay vigilant regarding whoever is in power, but we welcome the opportunity provided by a Trump administration to turn away from the abuses of the law that have been so widespread in the Obama era.
