Congress passed the 1978 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to prosecute mob crimes, not to silence critics of government policy. But that’s exactly what academic figures with George Mason University in Virginia proposed to do just a few years ago.
Chris Horner, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has obtained university records through Freedom of Information Act requests that include correspondence from academics who petitioned Obama administration officials to pursue RICO charges against scientists and researchers who challenged the administration’s position on global warming and its regulatory agenda.
Last Tuesday, Horner released another report that details how special interests are burrowing in with governors to advance their climate change policy agenda.
Here’s what we already knew prior to the release of the new report.
The overt assault on the free speech rights of climate skeptics the university officials had cooked up was abandoned in favor of an alternative strategy that evolved into the partnership between green activists and state-level attorneys. At one point, 17 of the state attorneys general entered into a “Climate Change Conference Common Interest Agreement” to resist information requests. Horner has described the agreement as a “Get out of FOIA free card.”
A total of 23 environmental activists, trial lawyers, and academics came together in La Jolla, Calif., to devise the legal strategy against the oil and gas industry that laid the ground work for what eventually became the #ExxonKnew campaign. It was here that activists first proposed using RICO against fossil fuel companies with attendees gravitating toward the idea of using law enforcement powers and civil litigation to maintain pressure on industry that could lead to legislative and regulatory responses to global warming. Full details of the La Jolla meeting are available here.
On March 29, 2016, now-former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman hosted a press conference with former Vice President Al Gore and sixteen other state attorneys general to announce the announce formation of “an unprecedented coalition of top law enforcement” that would “defend climate change progress made under President Obama.” With the exception of Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who continued to press their case against energy companies, the remaining coalition members quickly fell away. FOIA documents strongly suggest that several of the other state attorneys general recognized that the coalition ran a serious risk of violating the free speech rights of individuals and organizations that dissented from the Obama administration’s climate agenda. The offices of both the Virginia and Iowa attorney generals expressed serious misgivings about the coalition right from the beginning.
But what has gone unreported is an effort on the part of long-time Democratic Party activist and megadonor Wendy Abrams to recruit Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to the cause. Madigan, a Democrat, ultimately decided against joining the coalition. Environmentalists have identified the attorney general as an “environmental champion” who has often fought utilities companies and also worked to block hydraulic fracturing. Yet, she decided not to press ahead with an investigation into Exxon Mobil’s statements on climate change. Emails obtained through FOIA requests show the correspondence between Abrams and Madigan’s office began in February 2016.
Abrams has a given a total of $721,690 almost entirely to federal Democratic candidates, according to FEC records. She has also served as a lobbyist for the Environmental Defense Fund and serves on the boards of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for American Progress, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and other environmental groups. It is worth noting that the Union of Concerned Scientists was one of the main sponsors of the La Jolla meeting.
Abrams is also a co-producer of The YEARS Project, which put out a video in February 2018 urging Houston to sue oil companies. In her correspondence, Abrams indicated that she wanted to meet with the Illinois attorney general and bring several key players to the meeting: Matt Pawa, an environmental plaintiffs’ attorney, Sharon Eubanks, who served as director of the Justice Department’s tobacco litigation efforts in the 1990s, and Steve Berman, a plaintiffs’ attorney with the firm Hagens Berman, who was also involved in the tobacco litigation. All three are involved in the #ExxonKnew campaign. While it’s not clear how well Pawa and Berman knew each other at the time of the proposed meeting with the Illinois attorney general, Hagens Berman acquired the Pawa Law Group in September 2017, just before San Francisco and Oakland announced they had signed the firm to manage their climate lawsuit against oil and gas producers. The purpose of the acquisition was to have a “dedicated environmental practice area” with Pawa assuming a prominent position.
The emails from Abrams to Madigan’s office are important because they demonstrate that the coordinated climate action campaign against energy companies began much sooner than what is commonly thought. The emails advance Berman’s involvement by more than a year and provide evidence that the lawsuits brought by Hagens Berman on both coasts have less to do with mitigating sea level rise and more to do with attacking oil and gas companies – by any means necessary. The email messages may also help to unravel where these environmental campaigns against energy companies draw their financial resources.
Kevin Mooney (@KevinMooneyDC) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C. who writes for several national publications.
