News

“Borders on bad faith”; “too clever by half”; “gamesmanship”

Brief filed slamming DoE stunt suddenly deciding there are no LNG pause studies after all In the latest development involving the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, GAO has filed its Reply to the Biden-Harris Department of Energy’s Opposition to GAO’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, and Memo in support thereof. With…

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WSJ Lead Editorial Cites LNG Scandal Outed by GAO

Today’s lead Wall Street Journal lead editorial, titled “The Harris Disguise, Energy Edition,” airs the LNG “pause” scandal outed by GAO litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. From the piece: Recall that in January the Energy Department imposed a moratorium on LNG permitting after a TikTok campaign made the issue a cri de coeur. Energy claimed the pause was…

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House Oversight Committee Presses DoE on LNG “Scandal-pause” Exposed by GAO

The Washington Free Beacon reports on a letter submitted by the House Committee on Oversight & Accountability seeking answers to questions raised by GAO’s Freedom of Information Act litigation most recently noted here. Excerpting the story: In court filings cited by the Oversight Committee leaders and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the Department of Energy acknowledged in September that…

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Biden-Harris DoE Dons a Big, Beautiful ‘Kick-me’ Sign on LNG Scandal-pause

A ‘tell’ giving “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” a run for its money The biggest scandal waiting to happen in policy—first revealed here, reported on by the Daily Caller here and updated by GAO here—is the Biden-Harris Department of Energy freezing exports of liquified natural gas exports purportedly because it needed to conduct a…

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Slow Down There Maestro, There’s Still a New Mexico (FOIA Suit)?

Longtime GAO readers may remember Energy Policy Advocates’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) suit against the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General (OAG), seeking records pertaining to that Office throwing its lot in with the Michael Bloomberg-financed scheme placing activists in AG offices to advance Bloomberg’s “climate” priorities. At long last, the dreadful and dismissive move by the…

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GAO’s New Jersey Win

GAO’s work continues to spawn published pieces. Today’s second entry is found at RealClear Energy, titled “Regulation-By-Litigation Disregards the Democratic Process and Undermines the Fair Administration of Justice”. The piece addresses what GAO’s OPRA litigation confirmed was more of the same, curious donor-financed climate litigation filed by progressive law enforcement officials at least nominally in parens patriae. For a fulsome…

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Update on the LNG Scandal-pause

Following up on this post, GAO sees this article in the Daily Caller both items detail GAO’s effort to formally ‘out’ to the public the Biden-Harris administration having buried an assessment of liquified natural gas exports which concluded they are a good and very beneficial thing. Whether and why in the world a bunch of activist political appointees would do…

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Yes, Louisiana, there is a Scandal-“Pause”

DoE court filing supports claims of buried 2023 study, LNG “pause” based on a lie In a recent court filing, after months of stalling and flouting numerous legal obligations and deadlines the Biden-Harris Department of Energy, through its lawyers at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, let slip something it had spent a year, including three months…

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From the Annals of “Back off, man, I’m an Academic”

GAO has prevailed against the University of Michigan Regents’ effort to dismiss GAO’s FOIA suit seeking records reflecting the use of this public institution (specifically, its law school), for activist-donor campaigns (specifically, in service to the climate industry). GAO previously detailed the suit and the Law School’s efforts to shield what it admitted in pleadings was a project for the…

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GAO Told You So

This WaPo piece today is more notable for the context in which the violations come than the violations themselves, and recalls GAO’s previous caution: The inquiry reported immediately above was into something completely different, “contact between the agency’s top air official and Harvard University, his former employer.” GAO noted, on numerous occasions, Mr. Goffman’s approach to applicable legal limitations. These…

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EPA: They Are Who We Thought They Were

GAO had occasion to read the USEPA’s brief filed in the D.C. Circuit in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. EPA, a matter in which over half the states have sued the Agency challenging its decision to suddenly and dramatically tighten a primary National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for soot. This rule was pre-announced in March 2022 as one of the…

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GAO Sues Wisconsin for Records re: “UN Foundation” Funding of Government Activism

Government Accountability & Oversight seeks records related to donor-financed climate activists in state departments Government Accountability & Oversight, with representation from the Wisconsin Transparency Project, has filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Administration alleging that DOA violated the state’s Open Records Law. DOA—and specifically the Office of Sustainability & Clean Energy created by executive order to implement the…

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GAO Seeks Discovery in Mass. AG Records Case

See GAO’s motion seeking discovery and memorandum of law in support of same here and here, respectively.

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One Small Step for Man…

GAO is pleasantly surprised and will take a modest bow, following this report in today’s Washington Times. Putting aside any issues this presents to legislative counsel going forward, here’s wishing Rep. Fitzgerald, et al., good luck in doing their part to draw attention to this practice of donor-staffed law enforcement, which has now spread throughout state governments. Even Capitol Hill.

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Delay Equals Denial and That May Be the Point

Minutemen, the MA OAG are Not As GAO has previously noted, the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General has engaged in a pattern and practice of stalling to avoid meeting its obligation of public transparency about its operations. Now, Energy Policy Advocates has filed an emergency motion arising out of this pattern and the bad faith involved in EPA v.…

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Massachusetts AG Answering Questions…Sort of

The docket in Energy Policy Advocates v. Healey (II) shows that MA OAG has at long last answered court-ordered interrogatories about its withholdings of records reflecting work behind its launching of activist climate litigation (for more background see here). Maura Healey left office in January 2023, so the case style does reflect that, unfortunately, MA OAG is not cured of its…

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UPDATES: FOIA’d Emails Suggest More Biden Administration Politicking with Federal Programs

GAO has discerned some possible further politicking with and (surprise!) pen-and-a-phone scheming within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid. Further cross-checks are underway to confirm whether what appears to be is in fact the case but, for the moment, GAO is refreshing this post with more, recent document productions from CMS, here, here and here. Previously, GAO posted: See here for updates…

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GAO Files Suit Against California AG re Activist Climate Litigation

As noted here, In September California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined the climate litigation cavalcade seeking to pay for green new deal goodies without openly raising taxes. It was a funny lawsuit: Gov. Gavin Newsom flew to New York City to announce it to a “Climate Week” audience more receptive than constituents suffering under punishing gasoline prices. Bonta then flew…

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Is the Biden LNG-export “‘Pause’ to Study” a Cheap Fake?

Sources say January 2024 “pause” to study the impacts of LNG exports is based on a fib; that the macroeconomic study was in fact already produced, in 2023, but gave ‘wrong’ answer and was buried Today, Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Energy, over DoE’s failure to provide even the…

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