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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Court Awards GAO $225,000 in Legal Fees Over Records Fight

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Emails revealed Hollywood and other wealthy donors quietly financing law firm, with charitable foundation serving as pass-through for millions in “charitable grants”

Financing raises disclosure, possible ethics and tax questions

Late last month, the Superior Court for Los Angeles County awarded Government Accountability & Oversight $225,000 for local counsel James K.T. Hunter’s time spent litigating the California Public Records Act litigation, Government Accountability & Oversight v. Regents.

This lawsuit to obtain public access to public records spanned just over two years, in which the University waged a scorched-earth effort of obstruction, enlisting a team of lawyers including a major law firm’s former chair of global litigation and of its appellate practice group, for what the school then insisted to the court was really a nothingburger of a case.

Based on the hundreds of hours GAO’s two lawyers were forced to spend on the matter, it seems likely that UCLA paid its own outside firm five or more times that amount. As such, GAO is still struggling to discern the school’s actual view of the importance of the matter.

A hint as to the suit’s importance can be found in the substance of what GAO learned on the public’s behalf. In April, the court ordered UCLA to release most of what GAO sought, following which GAO broke the story laid out in those records that Leonardo DiCaprio and at least one green Republican donor (and quite possibly another, influential Republican donor, Andrew Sabin) have — from the beginning — privately financed the wave of “climate nuisance” litigation brought on behalf of governmental entities by the law firm Sher Edling, LLP.

The millions of dollars were run through a public charity as “charitable donations” to the firm. This pre-paid financing model of suits — which are nonetheless being prosecuted under extraordinarily generous “contingency fee” agreements offering amounts typically associated with firms taking the risk of not being paid for the work — seemingly represents a revolution in the legal industry.

So, GAO is pleased to announce that, although it took two years of litigation for the public to learn about this, despite UCLA’s apparent willingness to do and spend anything to keep this under wraps, the public now better understands the climate litigation industry and even its genesis: Hollywood bigwigs taking tax deductions to launch a legal tsunami.

That suggests one reason why the University fought and spent as it did.

These revelations might well have implications for one or more of the “climate” lawsuits the Hollywood money is actually paying for.

As GAO and the public further assess the meaning of this and related information, GAO expects further developments on this issue.

DISCLOSING THE REAL “CLIMATE RISK”: CASE STUDY: UK “ESG” Billionaire Behind U.S. Climate Regulatory, Litigation Campaigns

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GAO published research today revealing the breadth and depth of a campaign by “ESG” investors  — and one investor in particular — costing hundreds of millions of dollars and instilling in investors the fear that their assets could become worthless, or nearly so, as a result of adverse regulatory and inevitable climate-litigation outcomes.

The campaign is seemingly designed to drive investment to “ESG”-rated entities, in which these activist investors have played bets and which compose part of a a financial “bubble”, one that was rapidly deflating even prior to the recent stock market meltdowns.

A major component of this campaign, as detailed in the paper “DISCLOSING THE REAL “CLIMATE RISK”: CASE STUDY: UK “ESG” Billionaire Behind U.S. Climate Regulatory, Litigation Campaigns,” is regulation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After a campaign in which one investor sunk over twenty million U.S. dollar, the Biden SEC proposed the desired rule, comments on which proposal rule are due today.

The research is included or otherwise referenced in GAO’s comments submitted to the SEC. Read the entire paper here.

Toplines

  • New research details how scores of millions of dollars are directed by a UK investor to finance “climate disclosure” campaigns now threatening U.S. companies through proposed rules from the Biden SEC, and to support U.S. climate litigation despite denials by grant recipients that funds are used for U.S.-targeted operations
  • Agenda has driven billions to “ESG” managers — those invested in companies with (or claiming) “Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance” priorities — has helped create an ESG “bubble” now rapidly deflating
  • ESG campaigning has appearance of being massive, sophisticated rent-seeking operation
  • Self-described “opportunistic activist” hedge-fund ESG investor embodies, leads the practice, funding campaigns designed to scare investment away from non-ESG companies; “describes activism as a tool to protect his investments”

Key Points

  • British billionaire and “ESG” hedge fund manager Sir Christopher Hohn has directed scores of millions of dollars to the climate advocacy industry driving investment to ESG
  • Hohn funds global climate litigation-support infrastructure through a network of groups
  • Profits from Hohn’s hedge-fund operation are run from the UK to underwrite ESG, “climate risk disclosure” and climate litigation to, e.g., the U.S.
  • Despite claims by grant beneficiaries that Hohn’s charity “has a strict policy against funding any activities related to US litigation”, funds granted to a Dutch group heavily financed by Hohn are then transferred to U.S. beneficiaries central to the U.S. climate litigation industry
  • Hohn’s foundation maintains strategic oversight of grantees, to second- or third-order beneficiaries
  • Despite successful “ethical investor” branding campaign, Sir Christopher recently described his shareholder activism as “more opportunistic rather than fundamental”; “he describes activism as a tool to protect his investments”
  • A senior Chinese Communist official serves as an “independent climate advisor” to Hohn’s campaign
  • This ‘philanthropic’ activism is reasonably viewed as an historically successful marketing and branding campaign benefitting Hohn’s ESG investment fund and increasing the value of his holdings
  • While the policy advocacy is underwritten as charity, “climate disclosure” and climate litigation, like all ESG campaigning, may well be most properly viewed as necessary support mechanisms for a particular investor class’s chosen portfolio of investments

Transparency Group Sues Biden White House Over “Climate Disinformation” Records

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Government transparency group Energy Policy Advocates (EPA) filed suit on Thursday against the Biden White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy’s refusal to produce correspondence pertaining to one of an increasing number of initiatives to combat opposition to the administration’s political agenda as “disinformation.”

Specifically, EPA argued:

“The request sought certain described correspondence of two named officials, Eric Lander and Jane Lubchenco, over an eight-week period of time, on any email account used at any time for work-related correspondence, that was sent to one or more of six or five named outside parties, respectively. This request pertained to an OSTP “event on countering climate change denial and delay” in which the Office brought in political activists to discuss, e.g., social science which might explain political opposition to their demands. See, e.g., Maxine Joselow, “White House schedules first event on countering climate change denial and delay,” Washington Post, February 24, 2022. …

The requested records will inform the public of high-profile ethics revelations at OSTP and media coverage thereof, and also the genesis of a tendentious event and campaign out of OSTP. The described meeting seeking to counter political opposition, one of many Biden administration initiatives seeking to do so by styling opposition as “disinformation” (“deliberate disinformation campaigns that are as insidious as they are invidious”, https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/02/25/readout-of-white-house-climate-science-roundtable-on-countering-delayism-and-communicating-the-urgency-of-climate-action/), was the subject of substantial national and international media coverage.

The public deserves to know, without further delay, the genesis of the aforementioned tendentious effort.”

EPA’s complaint also noted that the group sought the described emails with outside activists on any email account, citing:

“in this request that one of the two officials, Ms. Lubchenco, had been shown during a prior stint as a political appointee in a different agency during a previous administration to have continued to use her previous employer’s “.edu” email account for official federal work-related correspondence, and also detailed Defendant’s own history, during that same administration, of employees having been found to engage in the practice of using non-official email accounts for work-related correspondence.”

 

 

‘Titanic’ Revelation: DiCaprio Nabs Starring Role in Private Financing of Government ‘Climate’ Lawsuits

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Is this among the millions that foundations are providing to a ‘contingency fee’ tort firm? Did tort firm disclose to politician clients? Did politicians disclose to legislatures and taxpayers?

In 2020, information surfaced in IRS Forms 990 filed by the non-profit Resources Legacy Fund (“RLF”) suggesting that the ‘climate nuisance’ and ‘consumer fraud’ lawsuits filed by Sher Edling, LLP on behalf of progressive attorneys general officials and local governments, were being privately financed to the tune of millions of dollars.

“Charitable grants” of millions of dollars to a plaintiff’s tort firm are certainly unusual. This was particularly curious given the politicians hired Sher Edling with contingency fee contracts promising them tens of millions in the event they prevail, because the governments couldn’t afford to pay the firm and the firm took the risk in making the investment in the cases unsure of a payday.

“Deception may make for a good story on the big screen, but this new evidence raises some very troubling questions outside of Hollywood. Are well-heeled donors secretly funding government litigation by attorneys who are also seeking a second, multi-million dollar payday from the taxpayers?”

One law professor, Michael Krauss of George Mason University, raised questions about the arrangement, in Forbes.com. Indeed, if the money given to the law firm at the same time the lawsuits began being filed was for those lawsuits, then the non-profit obscured that fact with misleading language. The grants were officially reported as supporting “land or marine conservation” (2017) ($432,129), then as “advancing healthy communities” (2018) ($1,319,625) then, apparently having run out of euphemisms, as supporting “land or marine conservation, promotion of education and/or healthy communities” (2019) ($1.1 million).

Nonetheless, emails just obtained by Government Accountability & Oversight in open records litigation in California after a two-year legal battle at least confirm that private parties were in fact “serious supporters” underwriting the litigation (and presumably still are). These include Leonardo DiCaprio who, a review of his foundation’s IRS filings suggest, routed his group’s funding through at least one other organization.

So, Terry [Tamminen]’s group — at the time Tamminen was CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation — and Dan Emmett are “strong supporters” of the Sher Edling litigation. And their colleague om several environmentalist enterprises, major Republican ‘green’ donor Andy Sabin was targeted to possibly help fund the assault, too.

It is possible that the “serious support” for “the nuisance litigation” was funneled into RLF’s $3 million that has so far been reported. However, Emmett’s foundation’s 990s (and his word choice) suggest this was personal money or, if it was from his own foundation, then that money too may have been routed through at least one other organization. Likely conduits for that latter task, from the various 990s, include Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and Sustainable Markets Foundation, even the University of California.

This new revelation raises further, serious ethical as well as public policy questions. Among them: what’s with the contingency fee pacts promising lawyers a substantial share of a claimed hundreds of millions of dollars in supposed losses by the taxpayers in the plaintiff jurisdictions when the firm isn’t, in fact, taking the suggested risk/investing on its own lots of uncompensated time on a suit that may never pay? Do the clients and the taxpayers they represent know about this?

Notably, there is no indication from these records or other such correspondence obtained under open records laws that this “serious support” is litigation finance for a stake, just donors ponying up to finance the cases as a cause.

Consider Minnesota. There, the firm’s contract had to be approved by a Legislative Advisory Commission as a good government measure. The Minnesota AG’s contract with Sher Edling states, in toto, re compensation for the work: More

Climate FOIA: Public Wins, Court Orders Virginia AG Office to Comply with the Law Re Bloomberg Docs

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2018 lawsuit, which already revealed previously-denied memo, other emails, takes major step forward

RICHMOND, VA (April 20, 2022) — Virginia citizen Christopher Horner and the free-market public policy group Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) prevailed yet again yesterday in their lawsuit against Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.

The suit was filed in the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond in November 2018, then subsequently dragged out through various maneuvers by then-AG Mark Herring’s Office. It sought to get to the bottom of contradictory positions the Office of Attorney General (OAG) has taken regarding its effort to bring into the Office one or more privately hired “Special Assistant Attorneys General” (SAAGs) with salary and benefits are actually paid by a Center created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg, expressly to pursue issues of concern to Mr. Bloomberg. The suit also sought records relating to OAG’s review and determination of any ethical concerns in entering the unprecedented, highly conflicted arrangement which OAG applied for, via Bloomberg’s “Center for State Impacts”, on September 15, 2017.

In a memo written on that date, Herring’s Office pursued — then later struck an agreement, all in writing — to bring one or more privately hired activist lawyers in-house to do an activist group’s bidding, a pursuit which was abandoned over the telephone after the Office began receiving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for correspondence and memos about the venture.

As the original Petition detailed, Virginia’s former Attorney General applied for, and was subsequently approved, for a privately funded special prosecutor for climate and renewable energy, to be paid $81,500 per year as an employee of Mr. Bloomberg’s “Center” established at New York University (NYU). The outfit was created for this purpose of placing employees in OAGs that commit to “advancing progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions” favored by Mr. Bloomberg.

During discovery, the plaintiffs learned of the existence of a “GOLD Decision Memorandum” explaining the plans for these “SAAGs”, which Herring’s Office had denied existed. In another FOIA lawsuit by Horner after this revelation, and which sought to get around the stonewalling in this first suit, Herring’s Office has claimed the memo is privileged “working papers” that the public cannot see.

These revelations also played a role in the recent trial in the case decided yesterday. The Office will have to acknowledge that memo and other documents in a computer folder also revealed in discovery exist, and decide whether to at long last turn the memo and other records over, too, or keep litigating but now claiming this very narrow privilege.

The Petition also noted that as part of this application, but without citing to any specifics, OAG certified that it has the legal authority to bring in employees funded by Bloomberg, and that there are no gift or professional responsibility impediments. This not only contradicts Virginia law and raises questions relating to ethical obligations for attorneys paid by non-clients, but OAG claimed it had “no records” showing that it ever undertook any such analysis, opinion or conclusion on its legal assertions.

Horner and CEI detailed the arrangement, and Virginia’s effort to join in such a extensive and elaborate campaign using AG offices in coordination with major contributors and activist pressure groups to attain a policy agenda that failed through the democratic process, in a recent report, “Law Enforcement for Rent” and extensive appendix of source documents also available on ClimateLitigationWatch.org

Horner and CEI’s most recent victory is at least the third instance so far in which Virginia’s OAG has been defeated in the same case. The former Attorney General’s insistence that he did not have records to provide Mr. Horner and CEI was rejected initially at the motion to dismiss stage. Upon being ordered to file an answer, the Attorney General instead filed a “Plea of Nulla Bona,” in which the office again reiterated its position that no further records of its relationship with NYU and the Bloomberg-funded Center existed. When the Court rejected the Plea of Nulla Bona, the Attorney General at long last filed an answer, and the case was set for trial. Following trial, the Court has now ordered the Attorney General to search for and produce the documents it has long stated do not exist.

Horner said “We look forward to the results of a proper search and hope Virginia’s new Attorney General will put an end to three and a half years of stonewalling over how the state’s former top attorney come to make such a promise, and what led them to abandon the effort after we started asking questions. Hopefully, he’ll now turn over these public records that have been at issue since 2018.”

Local counsel Graven W. Craig represented the parties, joined by Matt Hardin, and Chris Horner pro hac vice.

FOIA’d Docs: Treasury Sec Preps for Senate Hearing with…Polling Data

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More documents for the shocked-but-not-surprised department have come to us courtesy of government-transparency group Energy Policy Advocates (EPA), obtained in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation with the Biden Administration Treasury Department.

These records were produced because they include certain phrases relating to the “climate” agenda (and/or pressure groups that love it), such as “ESG”, “climate risk”, “climate-related financial disclosures”, “exposure to climate related risks”, and “social cost of carbon”.

EPA-obtained docs previously showed that the Biden Treasury Department’s talking point to support higher tax rates — “race to the bottom” — was rolled out in coordination with a Washington Post writer. (Recently unredacted emails also show that Treasury overwithholds to keep embarrassing but plainly and purely factual information about such machinations from the public; but they’re clinging like grim death to the ‘RTTB’ redactions on just this one.)

Now take a gander at what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin and her team found to be appropriate briefing materials for a July hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government:

It is unclear whether the “20210622 Senate FSGG Polling Doc” was provided to the Administration by the Committee, or obtained by the Administration for the hearing (either way: on whose dime?). Regardless, the polling information is withheld in full as “deliberative process materials” (🙄). That’s a shame because the contents must be fascinating.

Having taken their eyes off the ball, the administration’s polling numbers on handling the economy make even more sense after reading this. That they are seemingly monomaniacally focused on the spin over the substance — i.e., polling — and this is the result only makes one truly wonder about the competence of those at the federal till(er).

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