Government Accountability & Oversight has filed a California Public Records Act suit against the Department of Justice to obtain public information that the DoJ has redacted in full or part, all pertaining to the state’s participation in the climate industry’s litigation campaign, its Plan B of “climate superfund” in the face of the former bogging down—requiring legislation unlikely to get off the ground outside of a few bastions of progressive-activist governance—and of course its related pivot to Plan C plastics litigation.
These parts of the same whole have proved to have overlapping principals and underwriters.
Background can be found here, here, here, here and here.
The following excerpts from the petition explain what is at issue (citations omitted):
Government Accountability & Oversight (“Petitioner” or “GAO”) seeks several categories of non-privileged public records from the California Department of Justice (“DOJ”) regarding DOJ’s involvement in—and coordination with outside activists’ campaign of—controversial, high-profile litigation targeting the fossil fuels industry. Accordingly, each of the related requests at issue here seeks public records that reflect the “conduct of the people’s business.”…
GAO’s requests for public records focus on DOJ’s efforts to coordinate with environmental pressure groups (and agents of the foreign interests funding at least some of those groups) to pursue litigation attacking the oil and gas industry, which included spending millions of dollars in public funds to retain outside litigation counsel.
On September 15, 2023, DOJ filed a lawsuit against five oil and gas companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and BP) and the American Petroleum Institute. The seven-count 135-page complaint claims that the oil and gas industry misled the public about the link between fossil fuels and climate change. DOJ’s lawsuit has been joined with eight long-running lawsuits brought by counties and municipalities into a consolidated proceeding. Fuel Industry Climate Cases, San Francisco Super. Ct. No. CJC-24-005310. Respondent claims that this lawsuit is “one of the largest, most high-profile, and most significant cases the Department of Justice has ever litigated.”
To support DOJ’s in-house litigation efforts, the agency entered into a September 2023 contract with Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, LLP, which called for the state to pay the firm $1.5 million over an initial ten-month period. DOJ supplemented its outside representation in spring 2025 by retaining Sher Edling LLP to join Lieff Cabraser on the case. DOJ’s decision to divert millions of dollars to outside counsel rather than relying on the hundreds of attorneys employed by the agency led to a lawsuit by the in-house attorneys’ public sector union. California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges and Hearing Officers in State Employment v. California State Personnel Board, Sacramento Cnty. Super. Ct. No. 25WM000029.
On September 23, 2024, DOJ launched a second massive lawsuit, this time targeting ExxonMobil’s advanced recycling operations. People v. Exxon Mobil Corp., S.F. Super. Ct. No. CGC-24-618323. The six-count complaint spans 479 paragraphs across 147 pages, asserting wide-ranging claims stemming from DOJ’s contention that ExxonMobil had misled the public on plastics recyclability thereby damaging California’s communities and the State’s environment.
The same day DOJ filed its plastics challenge, several environmental pressure groups—Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper—filed a case asserting substantially similar claims attacking ExxonMobil’s advanced recycling operations. Sierra Club, Inc. v. Exxon Mobil Corp., S.F. Super. Ct. No. CGC-24-618321. The timing of these suits is no coincidence. DOJ coordinated its filing with the pressure groups and held a joint press conference on filing day to promote the litigation.
ExxonMobil has since sued Attorney General Bonta, Sierra Club, Surfrider, Heal the Bay, and Baykeeper for disparagement, defamation, tortious interference, and civil conspiracy arising out of the coordinated smear campaign against the company. Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Bonta, N.D. Tex. No. 1:25-cv-11 (filed January 6, 2025). As laid out in ExxonMobil’s complaint, the Attorney General worked with the environmental pressure groups and foreign interests controlled and funded by Australian mining billionaire (and anti-fossil-fuels activist) Andrew Forrest to attack America’s oil-and-gas industry to further Forrest’s competing business interests.
The pressure groups are represented by Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP, whose efforts are funded by Forrest. Along with his mining company (Fortescue Metals Groups), Forrest controls the Intergenerational Environment Justice Fund (IEJF) and a philanthropic subsidiary (the Minderoo Foundation). Among other things, ExxonMobil alleges that IEJF hired Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP to pursue the plastics litigation on behalf of the environmental pressure groups; that Cotchett’s ties to Forrest’s business interests required several of the firm’s partners to register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice; and that the firm’s attorneys donated tens of thousands of dollars to Bonta’s political campaign.
GAO brings this lawsuit to compel DOJ to comply with its obligation to release public records concerning these matters of intense public interest. The requests at issue here seek nonprivileged documents concerning various aspects of DOJ’s controversial war on the oil and gas industry.