About WebEditor

Posts by Web Editor:

Law Whispering is Dead, Long Live Law Whispering!

, 0

We don’ need no stinking SCOTUS opinions?

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has announced a Wednesday confirmation hearing for former Obama Environmental Protection Agency climate guru Joe Goffman to be Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation at the EPA. Goffman has served in an acting capacity or otherwise in-waiting since joining the Biden transition team, but this affair had previously succumbed to postponements due to Democratic members failing to show.

Goffman is boasted of in GreenWorld as being the EPA’s “Law Whisperer”, teaching old laws new tricks, as Energy Policy Advocates explained in its amicus brief in State of New York et al. v. (US) EPA. That brief laid out what open records productions show about how progressive state attorneys general offices, led by New York’s, worked with activists to craft a plan to impose the “climate” agenda through the Clean Air Act, somehow. To do so they turned to a network of former EPA employees cum outside activists, having been referred to them following NY OAG’s consultations on the plan with none other than Joe Goffman. Who now awaits confirmation to a position where he gets to decide whether he and his allies pull it off.

No, he hasn’t recused from New York, or related matters. More on that strange state of affairs momentarily. First, consider the further confounding fact that, subsequent to those machinations, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion calling a halt to “law whispering”. In fact, SCOTUS ruled specifically in the context of using the Clean Air Act to impose a climate agenda (indeed, a plan crafted by Mr. Goffman). Which seems relevant, what with more of the same being the very reason for bringing in the Law Whisperer.

Then there is that State of New York case. GAO readers may recall that this is about what the Wall Street Journal editorial page called “Biden’s BackDoor Climate Plan”, of effectively imposing a greenhouse gas rationing scheme through Clean Air Act provisions never enacted for such a task. Anyone who sees the emails and attachments reflecting the progression of  discussions — the “pretextual pas de deux” — preceding the January 20, 2021 filing of State of New York et al.  will wonder why Mr. Goffman did not recuse from EPA’s deliberations over that now-exposed stab at a sue-and-settle by the party he consulted with, or from deliberations over how to use other provisions of the Clean Air Act to force “climate” rules into place.

The short answer is because he did not disclose his consultation with the AGs (New York’s OAG). Well.

That’s bad. Are things actually worse? After all, in West Virginia v. EPA the Supreme Court called a halt to “law whispering”, or let’s pretend the law really lets us do this thing Congress keeps refusing to authorize us to do. And as this PowerPoint — the latest of several iterations or redacted release from USEPA in FOIA litigation also brought by Energy Policy Advocates — makes quite clear, Mr. Goffman came into the administration raring to go with the whole teach the Clean Air Act new tricks thing, as surely was the point.

It sets forth several of those old laws the Biden EPA under Mr. Goffman intends to use to impose the climate agenda. Post West Virginia, that would mean, again, congressional intent be damned.

So, will EPW members ask, is it SCOTUS be damned, as well? West Virginia v. EPA seems to have removed the rationale for bringing Mr. Goffman in, to craft “Biden’s BackDoor Climate Plan“. Which is not a bar to his confirmation, but certainly something to press him on and be wary of (now, the failure to recuse seems to be a different kettle of fish). But, has this attorney been chastened by SCOTUS on his signature move, in a historic smackdown? Or has the activist ideologue won out?

As EPA notes in seeking to get this PowerPoint further unredacted — given there is de minimis foreseeable harm to the Agency in releasing what are now mostly if not all pipe dreams, if expensive ones to the taxpayer (and the economy, in the interim) were EPA appointees to keep bad habits alive until struck down again:

[USEPA] withholds, through redactions of 8 pages of a PowerPoint presentation titled “Power Sector Strategy [on] Climate, Public Health [and] Environmental Justice,” setting forth “proposed strategies” to impose that agenda (Defendant’s Statements of Material Undisputed Facts, ECF No. 16-2, ¶¶ 24-32), through “regulating and reducing power sector pollution” (Shoaff Declaration, Exhibit A, p. 20). As the audience, the White House Climate Office, affirms, this is a February 4, 2021, presentation about using the Clean Air Act (slides 6 – 11) and other statutory authorities implemented by the Agency to impose a “climate” agenda, to restrict the use of certain fuels through air emission and solid waste regulatory regimes.

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), decided June 30, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Agency’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), specifically carbon dioxide (CO2), under the Clean Air Act’s (CAA) Section 111, “to implement the needed shift in generation to cleaner sources” by using the CAA in a way that “would implement a sectorwide shift in electricity production from coal to natural gas and renewables.” Id. This regulation, known as the “Clean Power Plan,” was one of several Agency attempts in recent years to deploy CAA to restrict GHGs, particularly CO2, by those described outcomes, none of which efforts passed judicial muster.[1] As the Court noted, in striking down EPA’s effort to do so through §111, “Prior to the Clean Power Plan, EPA had used Section 111(d) only a handful of times since its enactment in 1970.” Id. (EPA cites and redacts its discussion of using §111(d) to restrict GHGs on slide 8).

As noted by the Court in West Virginia, there “EPA claimed to discover an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion of its regulatory authority in the vague language of a long-extant, but rarely used, statute designed as a gap filler. That discovery allowed it to adopt a regulatory program that Congress had conspicuously declined to enact itself.” Id. The Court again rejected EPA’s claim to possess heretofore unknown authority to impose this agenda in obscure Clean Air Act provisions. Notably, to date, in addition to the redacted material addressing precisely this use of the CAA on slide 8, the other provisions and programs cited in the redacted slides/pages at issue — e.g., effluent Non-attainment provisions (slide 7), air toxics standards (e.g., MATS Rule)(slide 6) Regional Haze (a visibility program[2]) — also have never been discovered to provide EPA the authority to impose this agenda.

Here’s to a meaningful discussion tomorrow over West Virginia and this signature approach of claiming to find elephants in mouse holes, as Justice Scalia first put it, so to conjure an ideological agenda into place regardless of actual congressional grants of authority. Which might reasonably begin with learning why in the world Mr. Goffman never disclosed or recused from these matters in the first place, starting with State of New York.

[1] See, “And this Court doubts that “Congress. . . intended to delegate . . . decision[s] of such economic and political significance,” i.e., how much coal-based generation there should be over the coming decades, to any administrative agency.” West Virginia at 5-6. See West Virginia v. EPA, generally.

[2] “The Regional Haze Rule calls for state and federal agencies to work together to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas”. https://www.epa.gov/visibility/regional-haze-program

D.C. Circuit Surprise Filing: Speaker McCarthy “Fully Supports” Pelosi Campaign to Shield Docs Re Use of Donor-Provided Investigative “Staff”

, 0

GAO wrote yesterday about the D.C. Circuit ordering new Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to state his view on whether the House should be free from public scrutiny of (i.e., continue to keep secret) the machinations behind the importation of donor-provided ‘ringer’ staff — off the books and in violation of House rules, incidentally —  to plot and execute the House Oversight Committee’s targeting of political opponents.

The importance of the public’s right to know was heightened once it became clear last year the House ethics bodies had swept the complaints about these revelations under the carpet.

In its Order, the Court also invited Speaker McCarthy to reconsider the sweeping anti-transparency position of his predecessor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as journalist Rob Schilling indicated to the Court seemed highly likely given Mr. McCarthy’s public statements about increasing transparency and undoing her aggressive litigation stances.

As GAO noted in its post, doing so would also fulfill numerous other key promises made by Mr. McCarthy in finally attaining the support of colleagues to become Speaker.

Not only did McCarthy say the following about one committee’s notorious overreach, vowing to release the pertinent record because, well, serious allegations were made and the public deserve to know if the facts bear those charges out:

“You have spent a year and a half and millions of taxpayers’ dollars conducting this investigation. It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people… The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts.”

Mr. McCarthy also pledged in a statement, “The House will no longer be taking hyper-politicized stances in amicus curiae or in litigation…The American people elected this majority to hold this administration accountable and to protect this institution.”

“Mr. McCarthy didn’t say what sorts of cases the House would get involved in under his new approach, but new GOP committee chairs have laid out an expansive oversight agenda that will likely involve repeated clashes over access to documents and witnesses from the Biden administration.”

So imagine GAO’s surprise yesterday when Speaker McCarthy filed a motion with the Court affirming he “fully support[s]” his predecessor’s arguments keeping this ugly episode from public scrutiny under the Common Law Right of Access to federal records.

The new leadership claims a desire to reform the House’s stance in litigation and activism, and to be more transparent. It appears this does not extend to its stance in litigation seeking to bring about such transparency over certain parties bringing in donor-provided activists to run investigations (plainly in violation of the self-governing body’s rules).

New Controversy Recalls Old Document Revelations

, 0

The Washington Times has a rather substantial exclusive up this morning, “Green groups, government officials meet secretly to plot end of gas stoves and appliances”. The piece keys off of the very real issue  of using the state to ban gas stoves, expanding across the country and which recently stumbled onto the national stage with a clumsily half-baked “reveal” in a Bloomberg interview by CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr.

The agenda is laid out in notes obtained in late 2020 from a two-day, July 2019 meeting hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (“RBF”) at the Rockefeller family mansion at Pocantico, New York, styled “Accelerating State Action on Climate Change.”

The meeting’s attendee list is below. The notetakers were Carla Frisch of the activist group/consultancy which is the public face behind the stove-ban campaign, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), and an official from Tom Steyer’s Energy Foundation, Katie McCormack, who circulated an oftentimes verbatim, typewritten set. These records were obtained by Energy Policy Advocates.

These notes create a “me or your lying eyes?” problem for the hapless cleanup crew tasked with dismissing Trumka’s scandalously candid boast as a “culture war”: conjured by others, and from nothing. Insert “gaslighting” pun here.

For example, these notes confess to the plan, e.g., as summarized by RDF’s Michael Northrup,

“Natural Gas

** States need a road map for how to get off natural gas (Katie Dykes)
** There’s an opportunity to understand all the rules and incentives that preference gas and unwind them
** Buildings may be the best first target for moving beyond gas

The individual tasked with managing the issue for Team Rockefeller, Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (DEEP) Dykes, is recorded in the notes as admitting nonetheless that “gas keeps prices down while building more expensive RE” (renewable energy).

Further damning, the “problem” for the nannies, as New Mexico’s Energy Secretary sees it, is the state’s booming oil & gas production.

Confessing further political and economic woes dogging the radical agenda, Frisch’s notes reflect a view of the conundrum as “gas + jobs vs no jobs + climate.” 
Here the climate set confesses to net economic pain and job loss (which “substantial job losses”, related records show, they also privately admit to, generally).

Readers can judge which time these officials and activists are telling the truth: among themselves and their donors at the Rockefeller mansion as written in their own hand, or in their public denials of the obvious?

One of the more amusing items Ms. Frisch found worthy of documenting was a discussion apparently complaining that “Ernie Moniz saying gas is a bridge fuel…”, about which outrage California regulator Mary Nichols commented, “Moniz has not been well managed.”

“Gas is a bridge fuel” of course was the greens’ line for several years to defend their war on coal, now more openly revealed to be a war on abundant, affordable energy of any sort.

Some other color from the meeting fyi:
RBF housed the public employees at Pocantico, flying them there by running the money through the Georgetown Climate Center — a Georgetown Law School vehicle that runs climate campaigns for donors and which, for tax purposes, is simply the 501c3 University.

Host and RBF President Michael Northrop emailed one official that the Rockefellers keep the air conditioning on at a level in which one doesn’t wear short sleeves. There is some irony here given the agenda of making energy less abundant and more expensive.

Emails between RBF and the Center for a New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, run by former Colorado Democratic Governor Bill Ritter and now “new energy economy” advocate, reveals concern that these notes would find their way to someone like Energy Policy Advocates. For example, RBF raised the prospect of mailing the notes instead of email. Ritter cited to an EPA request they had learned about from Sarah Cottrell Propst, Cabinet Secretary of New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals, & Natural Resources Department.

Another, possibly more thoughtful correspondent suggested that “Snail mail is probably subject to open records too, no?” Yes.

DC Circuit Invites New Speaker to Reverse Pelosi Position on Secrecy re Oversight Abuses

, 0

Savvy readers will remember journalist Rob Schilling’s investigation into the weaponization of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. That Committee appeared, under its prior leadership, to be accepting “in kind” contributions from wealthy donors — boasted of by everyone from George Soros’s and Pierre Omidyar’s activist groups to the in-kind “staff” and Subcommittee Chair Ro Khanna (in seesaw fashion) — which coincided with the threat of subpoenas to the targets of these donors’ political ire.

Ugly precedent, that. The term Weaponization of the Federal Government comes to mind.

Schilling sought records from the House and its officers which would have shed light on the degree to which outside actors using outside funding had engineered and/or helped execute the agenda of a Congressional Committee. When he was denied access to those records, he filed suit in the US District Court against the House and its Speaker (at the time, Nancy Pelosi), seeking access under the Common Law Right of Access, which empowers citizens to review government records and activities. He later amended the Complaint to include the Committee.

“You have spent a year and a half and millions of taxpayers’ dollars conducting this investigation. It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people… The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts.”

The District Court dismissed Schilling’s suit, ruling that Congress was absolutely immune from suits under the Common Law Right of Access despite decisions dating back to the 1970s which suggest otherwise. Schilling appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court. There, the (soon to be outgoing-) Speaker Pelosi quickly filed a Motion for Summary Affirmance, seeking to deny Mr. Schilling the chance to even brief his claims in the ordinary way that all appeals are handled.

As Schilling noted in his opposition, this seemed to be a rush effort to avoid the prospect of Pelosi’s successor possibly having another view on whether such behavior should be free from the disinfectant of sunlight. After all, Kevin McCarthy had promised increased transparency, and even offered more pointed and highly relevant comments. For example, he wrote in November 2022 to the January 6 Committee that:

While the sentiments were directed at another committee, they could not be more perfect for this occasion.

Days later, Speaker Pelosi’s term in office ended and Speaker Kevin McCarthy took office. Now, the D.C. Circuit has agreed that possibly the new Speaker has a different view of transparency in the legislative branch than did his predecessor in office. This week, when ordering that Kevin McCarthy be substituted as a Defendant in this case, the Court further ordered that he must file a Motion by February 24 setting forth his view of how the issue should be handled going forward.

This serves up to Speaker McCarthy another opportunity to fulfill his promises, right one of the last Congress’s most egregious violations of norms and abuses of position, and ensure transparency in the people’s House in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing. Government Accountability & Oversight looks forward to reading what Mr. McCarthy has to say when he files his brief next month.

“ESG Check in”: More details on the Securities & Exchange Commission’s Activist Role in the “Whole of Government” Push on ESG, “Climate Risk Disclosure”

, 0

The indispensable transparency-in-government group Energy Policy Advocates has provided GAO a review of record productions from FOIA litigation with the Securities & Exchange Commission, including specifically from calendars of Chairman Gary Gensler and then-Commissioner Allison Herren Lee.

Between the near-obsession with advancing the “ESG” and “Climate Risk Disclosure” agenda which these reveal, and emerging information about an apparent revolving door example that’s ostentatious even by Washington standards, GAO feels bold to say that an inquiry into the Securities & Exchange Commission’s seemingly disproportionate focus on CRD and ESG, and its execution of this agenda, is warranted.

Factors includes:

  • Calendars for Chairman Gary Gensler and then-Commissioner Allison Herren Lee show a disproportionate investment of time and attention to CRD and ESG, troubling on its face but of course also arguably evincing Commission leadership’s distraction from emerging, major financial market problems (e.g., FTX/Alameda)
  • These are not the publicly available calendars, but calendars that Energy Policy Advocates had to sue to obtain. These often contain details scrubbed from the public versions
  • SEC heavily redacted these calendars, which is the subject of continuing litigation. Also, thanks to the same group, soon the SEC will have to produce the Biden transition-team plan, related records and all Biden campaign communications over a relevant period of time (re possible evidence of politicization)
  • Notably, the principal financier of the CRD/ESG advocacy campaign is a foreign “ESG investor”, Sir Christopher Hohn. As a GAO paper this past summer showed, Hohn has very close ties to Chinese officials but, more concerning still, also is concurrently financing the complementary “climate litigation” campaign, with tens of millions of dollars (despite denials of involvement in the U.S. climate litigation, records trace funds run through an opaque group in the Netherlands)
  • The SEC’s position is that it must impose ESG, e.g., the CRD rule, because investors demand it. This is true so far as it goes (see Hohn, Christopher, BlackRock, et al.), if not as the SEC implies. For more detail, see GAO’s comments here. Yet, given information developed over years of open records pursuits which leaves no doubt about CRD’s political and activist origins (led by New York AG’s Office, Ceres, BlackRock, and the obligatory Rockefeller interest), and pre-rule, high-level (Gensler) coordination with the Biden White House Climate Office, this claim seems pretextual
  • Calendars indicate that that coordination with the White House began in May and June 2021 at the Gensler level, carried on by his staff in September and December 2021
  • And now we have an apparent revolving door example that is ostentatious even by Washington standards

Regarding the latter, raising possible conflicts and undue influence issues re the climate risk disclosure rule, “Kristina Wyatt left the SEC [in February 2022] to join Persefoni, a climate management and accounting platform, as its deputy general counsel and senior vice president for global regulatory climate disclosure. Wyatt was serving as senior counsel for climate and ESG to the director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the SEC — she is steeped in the processes and decision-making that has underpinned this proposed ruling.”

The CRD rule public comment docket shows that Persefoni, a little-known but well-funded startup, held a disproportionate number of meetings with SEC staff compared to other advocates. It seems most likely that Persefoni was pushing its methodology for claiming the climate rule’s cost, given that the SEC has been unable to provide any methodology or citation for its lowballed cost of compliance estimate for CRD, and the only figure that comes close to the SEC’s comes from a survey jointly commissioned by Ceres, ERM and Persefoni.

The sheer volume of senior staff time dedicated to this issue, including canoodling with activists, is troubling. That this is all in pursuit of a political agenda item demanded by investors, yes — ideologically activist investors, including obvious rent-seekers — is another story entirely.

Each of these AHL items is distinct, btw

Energy Policy Advocates’ FOIA litigation with SEC continues on several fronts — one matter has revealed a four-alarm fire at the Biden White House when SEC passed along a FOIA request for correspondence between the two, “Importance: High”, to which the White House replied, “Has this production been flagged for OMB, CEQ and the WH Military Office?”. Expect more calendars, other documents and, ultimately, removal of certain redactions in coming weeks and months. GAO will stay on top of these important developments and this critical issue.

Fake Hearings? Boulder City Council Records Suggest Another ‘Public-Private Partnership’ with Activists

, 0

UPDATE: Exemplar Documents Loaded

UPDATE: Documents loaded (some Word docs follow separately, with interesting Properties)

GAO has documented the seemingly inarguable outsourcing of congressional oversight to donors, and their unelected donees, that reared its head in Washington, DC during the (mercifully concluding) 117th Congress.

Recently, GAO reviewed public records obtained by Energy Policy Advocates which suggest this is becoming a real thing outside the beltway, too. Consider the Boulder (CO) City Council, again in the context of climate and again specifically to try and give a boost to climate litigation (curious: is this widespread or just a climate industry thing?).

 

 

 

 

There is lots more in the somewhat buggy document (which we are attempting to shrink and post in full), affirming what transpired and further illuminating this practice.

The first thing that leaps out, after the obvious deployment of government by and for activists, is the reappearance of players from the ‘climate’ tort bar’s recruitment of Florida municipalities.

Because, well, of course.

 

GAO is continuing to wrestle with the document’s idiosyncrasies. We will return with items offering particular insights about how this governmental body came to be used this way, as we encounter them.

UPDATE:

GAO has loaded some select documents showing how these uses of government come about, as it deals with the original’s issues.

UPDATE: The totality of the PDF’d emails are here. Additional Word docs attached to those emails are here — some of them, like this, and this, have properties further showing the role of outside activists in producing nominally official output; xlsx docs attached to the emails are here, here and here.

 

More on ‘Independent Commission’ SEC Coordinating on ‘Climate Risk Disclosure’ with Biden White House

, 0

Readers may recall the recent revelation courtesy of the indispensable Energy Policy Advocates showing the Securities and Exchange Commission staff coordinating with the White House on the SEC’s monumental (and potentially monumentally disastrous) “climate risk disclosure” rule advanced at the request of and following a massive campaign financed by a “green” investor.

Now come a few more calendar entries that show the SEC staff-White House staff coordination came after principal-to-principal meetings between Chairman Gary Gensler and the White House Climate Office.

Over to you, oversight.

“Independent Commission” SEC Coordinated with White House on ‘Climate Risk Disclosure’ Rule

, 0

Like FERC, another ‘independent agency’ in fact taking White House direction

This is what a “Whole of government approach” to imposing an ideological agenda looks like

For those who haven’t followed the Institute for Energy Research’s revelations about the ‘independent commission’ Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), you should. See e.g., “Richard Glick’s White House Chats,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2022; Daniel Moore, “Threat of Summer Blackouts Looms Over FERC Chair’s Renomination,” Bloomberg.com, July 12, 2022; Catherine Morehouse, “GOP Probes FERC Chair Glick meetings with White House,” Politico, June 29, 2022 (IER’s website with the transparency campaigns records is here).

 

Courtesy of Energy Policy Advocates (EPA), we now see there is something of a pattern underway, and FERC Chair Glick’s White House Climate Office chats on that Commission weighing in and doing its part on the “whole of government approach” to ‘climate’ weren’t unique: documents just released in an Energy Policy Advocates v SEC FOIA case shows that SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s team also coordinated with the White House on their mammoth overreach, the highly controversial (and concerning) “climate risk disclosure” rule.

Email and scheduling traffic are unambiguous on this score. A few samples:

And, as the SEC’s production cover letter shows, SEC also is withholding 170 pages of EOP correspondence as “deliberative” (or, in the alternative, b6, “personnel file-type” information. Mmm, yes.).

“Independent agency” apparently means different things to different people. But the position the SEC have staked out is that the White House had a formal role in the SEC’s development of its CRD rule. Wut.

Also, GAO understands that the SEC’s lawyers have stated in meet-and-confers and even in status reports filed with the court that their delay in processing Energy Policy Advocates’ FOIAs was because they had to consult with the White House on what they should release or withhold.

So, last week EPA filed yet another suit for SEC’s correspondence consulting with the White House on the FOIAs. Clearly another one to watch.

 

Climate Industrial Complex: Emails Out ‘Urgent’ Media Role in Climate Complex, ‘Climate Disinformation’ Hearings

0

Bloomberg reporter outed as tool of climate PR/cancelation campaign, Hill hearings:

‘Urgently’ pressing story for House “climate disinformation” hearings this week, which emails also show had been pitched since at least February just prior to a previous, scrubbed House ‘disinformation’ hearing 

Defending Facebook’s “Climate Feedback” cancelation campaign of intimidating and harassing climate realists into silence, reporter assails FOIAing the public employees involved as the real ‘intimidation, ‘harassment’

The Emails showing media’s role affirm the coordinated Hill, media, activist climate PR effort to cancel opposition

Early last week a Bloomberg ‘cyber reporter’ named Margi Murphy began furiously emailing and calling two groups (Energy Policy Advocates and Government Accountability & Oversight), and seemingly anyone else for whom she could identify some association with the groups, expressing the ritual media complaint of “harassing climate scientists” — by which she of course meant seeking public records in the sincerest form of flattering Greenpeace, which pioneered such uses of open records laws. It was clumsy but, again, not unfamiliar as these stories get spun out every few years during moments of climate-complex desperation.

Then new emails released Friday evening made things much more interesting.

This reporter’s specific grievance was the apparent tyranny of using public records laws to obtain public release of public records showing how public servants use their publicly financed positions and resources to help out Facebook’s cancelation campaign, “Climate Feedback”. That operation is styled as an ‘independent fact checker’ but (like some media outlets, it seems) on call to try and cancel those who effectively question climate dogma — specifically to date Steve Koonin, Richard Lindzen/PragerU, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and John Stossel.

While this cancelation campaign — like Greenpeace’s FOIAs — is of course virtuous, asking about public employees’ role in it is “intimidation” and “harassment”.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As the week came to a close the reporter became increasingly frantic in her (her word) urgency. Once the rumored House “climate disinformation” hearings were officially noticed — including, amusingly, on “the role of public relations firms” — it became clear the scribbler was hurrying to crank out something usable in those fora. Witnesses will feature not only our Greenpeace heroes but another (publicly employed) academic who participates through her public position in an operation called the “Climate Social Science Network”, created by Tom Steyer-backed interests it seems to generate oppo research in the guise of academic chin-stroking at up to $60,000 per paper.

That is to say, there’s a coordinated media/Hill/activist PR campaign aggressively using government office and other public resources to decry opposition to their agenda as a coordinated PR campaign and therefore improper, and that asking for records about how public institutions are used in intimidating, harassing campaigns to cancel opponents is the real intimidation and harassment. (Putting aside that this practice was rolled out by greens, uses a tool created by the political left (now we learn: only for the left), and is a condition of public employment these public servants agreed to.)

The Bloomberg reporter largely reflected the self-unaware, par-for-the-course. But then the Fates conspired to release more, deliciously timed emails Friday evening, and they confirmed:  this ‘urgent’ Bloomberg item had also been pitched (our guess: yes, by a public relations firm! Which one(s)?) to others, since at least late January or February. Each time coincided with House hearings that were in need of such props.

Those Friday evening emails came from a climate industry boiler room, UCLA Law School, and included at the tail end “Ronan Farrow’s investigative researcher,” seeking comment for a story about the same two groups for the very same expressed reason (poor Climate Feedback thugs were getting FOIA requests). This, too, came just before a House “disinformation” hearing that also needed something to breathlessly wave around, though that event was scrubbed after it was obvious the first hearing flopped.

Oops

This embarrassing reveal is delightfully affirming of what the day-to-day evidence suggested about our institutions, and the importance of the public’s right to know about it.

LINKS:

FACEBOOK “FACT-CHECKER’S” MEDIA PITCH TO CANCEL CRITICS

EMails: Facebook Sics its “Independent Fact Checker” on Disfavored Speech

Censorship Update — FOIA’d Email: “Special Climate Envoy” Kerry Came in With Plans to “Engage” Facebook

Full-ride Climate ‘Scholarship’: Academics Raking In Up To $60k For Publishing ‘Climate’ Oppo Research as Academic Scholarship

GREENPEACE AND THE PATIENT-ZERO FOIA REQUEST: VIRTUOUS PURSUIT OF PUBLIC INFORMATION “INTIMIDATION,” “HARASSMENT” WHEN USED BY OTHERS

HOW THE CLIMATE-DONOR-MEDIA COMPLEX WORKS: Declaration of Christopher C. Horner in Government Accountability & Oversight v. Regents

Emails, Wayback Machine Gem Confirms: DiCaprio, Other Private Funders of Governmental Climate Litigation Paid Millions to “Climate” Lawyers Via Pass-through Charity

, 0

New revelations solve mystery whether wealthy donors are actually paying millions for lawyers to file massive “climate” lawsuits, despite contracts with taxpayer-clients set to pay same lawyers scores of millions as “contingency fee” out of clients’ alleged damages

‘Double-dipping’ at play? What did these generous politicians know and when did they know it?

Archived web post shows DiCaprio Foundation at first boasted of gift to foundation promoting green policies, a pass-through organization whose IRS filings reported curious payments to law firm behind litigation

Those IRS filings seem to have obscured the true purpose but Emails obtained in litigation confirm the what the millions were for

This Spring, GAO broke the story, laid out in records ordered by a court to be released in the California Public Records Act litigation Government Accountability & Oversight v. Regents, that Leonardo DiCaprio and at least one green Republican donor (and quite possibly another, influential Republican donor Andrew Sabin) had privately financed the wave of “climate nuisance” litigation brought on behalf of governmental entities by the law firm Sher Edling, LLP.

That revelation received no attention, despite reflecting a possible revolution in the legal industry. This seems about to change. Here is background on why.

Some of the DiCaprio, et al.,-funded “climate” lawsuits were dealt setbacks in court, hen judges ruled that the suits were an effort to influence federal environmental policy. This led the lawyers and plaintiffs to change tack and insist the cases are really purely local, consumer protection matters. Yet it appears that despite the lawyers’ change in rhetoric and claims to the courts, the same pass-through charity was quietly paying millions of dollars to the law firm bringing the case.

IRS filings and archived internet records appear to reveal that the same privately-financed project remained behind this litigation despite its ostensible change in focus, suggesting nothing had changed but the packaging. As defendants in the Minnesota lawsuit pointed out when removing that suit to federal court:

While purportedly brought under state law and in the name of consumer protection, this lawsuit by the State of Minnesota, acting through its attorney general (the “Attorney General”), is the culmination of a multi-year plan concocted by plaintiffs’ attorneys, climate activists, and special interests to force a political and regulatory agenda that has not otherwise materialized through the decisions of the political branches of the federal government. While the Attorney General is entitled to disagree with particular statements about climate and energy policy, he is not entitled to use state power to suppress speech and deter free association as part of a coordinated campaign to change federal climate and energy policy.

Indeed. And remarkably, at the same time the charity behind this politically-charged spate of lawsuits was also reporting to the IRS that an extraordinary series of “charitable grants” to the law firm were for environmental causes, the law firm receiving the grants was telling courts that its cases related to consumer protection and had no bearing on federal energy or environmental policy.

The same Minnesota defendants’ pleading raised the prospect that the governmental lawsuits were actually being privately financed. What made this prospect ever more of interest to the federal taxpayer, as one law professor noted in Forbes, was the fact of politicians awarding Sher Edling massive ‘contingency fee’ agreements to file these suits on behalf of the governmental clients — i.e., on behalf of their taxpayers — such as San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County (MD), Minnesota, and numerous others.

Contingency fee agreements pay substantial portions of any verdict or settlement that might eventually be reached to compensate the government plaintiffs for their ostensible damages to lawyers. These agreements allow lawyers to collect a portion of their clients damages supposedly because of the risk the lawyers take in handling the suits with a chance of no compensation, and investing their time in ventures that may never pay off.. And the wording of the agreements and related records obtained under open records requests leave no room to doubt that that fee is the compensation for the work.

This is especially curious, because documents now suggest that these attorneys may have been receiving payment from Hollywood donors for the same work that they ultimately also sought payment for from governmental clients.

Not one but two emails released in GAO v. Regents affirmed that “Terry [Tamminen]’s group” — at the time, Tamminen was CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation — and green Republican donor and benefactor of law schools assisting the climate cases (Harvard, UCLA) Dan Emmett are “strong supporters” of the Sher Edling litigation. And their colleague in several environmentalist and supporting academic enterprises, Sabin, was targeted to possibly also help fund the assault.

In one of these emails, we see a forwarded email from the “head[] of this new organization behind the lawsuits” — Sher Edling, LLP’s non-lawyer, public- and donor-relations guy Chuck Savitt — who called the funding source for the climate suits “the Collective Action Fund”.

That term was new to GAO, which now sees the phrase also used by the Hewlett Foundation in announcing a gift to a New Venture Fund “Collective Action Fund For Accountability, Resilience, And Adaptation.” That fund also claimed it was supporting such litigation, and so seemed a safe bet to be what Savitt was referring to. That Fund received, e.g., $3 million from the MacArthur Fund in 2020 for three years of work.

It seems Savitt was in fact referring to a different “collective action fund” also underwriting the campaign (read on). Either way, the dollars are really piling up to pay for lawyers millions of dollars to file “contingency fee” lawsuits!

As GAO noted when the DiCaprio revelation first emerged in this document production, one particularly noteworthy aspect is that the firm’s contingency agreements promise up to tens and tens of millions of dollars more per case in the event they prevail or settle. After all, the firms run the risk of not being paid. Or so it seems that at least some of the taxpayer-plaintiffs likely assumed when promising enormous “contingency fee” payments.

GAO pointed out that something called Resources Legacy Fund’s (RLF) IRS filings offered an odd mélange of reasons why it gave a private, for-profit tort firm millions of dollars in charitable grants, none of which reasons suggested what the emails show was the grants’ purpose: filing lawsuits (on behalf of clients who also contracted with the firm to pay tens of millions of dollars from supposed taxpayer damages if they scored big).

These reasons as the campaign was getting organized and the first few suits filed were: “land or marine conservation” (2017) ($432,129), “advancing healthy communities” (2018) ($1,319,625) then, apparently having run out of euphemisms, “land or marine conservation, promotion of education and/or healthy communities” (2019) ($1.1 million).

However, while the GAO v. Regents production, by proving a “Collective Action Fund” was privately, quietly financing the Sher Edling climate lawsuits — massive ‘contingency fee’ pacts to pay for the work, notwithstanding  — there remained some ambiguity whether the millions given Sher Edling in charitable grants by RLF were in fact for the climate litigation.

The emails helpfully suggested one take a look at the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. Stashed away on the Wayback Machine we see a 2017 post confirming that this Collective Action Fund does go into RLF’s pot that is paying the tort firm for the climate nuisance suits, as discussed in the emails.

This post happens to be from the first such LDF page available on Wayback, dated September 30, 2017. It was removed sometime after May 2021. LDF has since merged with other groups into an “environmental powerhouse” called Earth Alliance.

Given this, GAO raises again obvious questions raised by the revelation that the firm is being paid millions of dollars to prosecute government litigation for which, so far as the public record suggests, it was to be paid but only be paid tens and tens of millions of dollars (per client) if it won or settled:

Did the law firm disclose to its clients, e.g., Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, that it was already being paid to conduct this litigation?

That is, did the MN Legislative Advisory Commission know this when it approved the Ellison/Sher Edling contract, in its role as a good-government watchdog? If not, possibly Professor Krauss could update his thoughts on these arrangements.

Did the Michael Bloomberg-provided attorney in Minnesota (not to mention others in e.g., DC, RI and elsewhere), know this when she waived Sher Edling, LLP attorneys in to represent the state in its case, promising compliance with Minnesota rules of professional conduct? (GAO’s attorney readers may recall Rule 1.8(f) of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, adopted in plaintiff-states like Minnesota and Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia among other jurisdictions. It would be very surprising indeed if we do not hear more on that later.)

But if the firm did make this disclosure of the private financing for Minnesota’s litigation to Ellison, then taxpayers (and the Legislative Advisory Commission) might wonder whether Ellison informed the Commission of the full financial arrangements when he sought approval for his Sher Edling contingency fee contract. Because that disclosure doesn’t appear in the materials released under Minnesota’s open records law (scroll about 70% of the way down).

Curioser and curioser.

Load More