GAO was struck by a parenthetical aside in today’s opinion piece by RFF director and climate lawfare impresario Lee Wasserman, the most recent entry in a stepped-up advocacy campaign being waged by the Rockefeller Family Fund and various activist groups it supports:
“The Rockefeller Family Fund, which I direct, has spent roughly $200,000 since 2022 in support of environmental efforts in Vermont, including passage of the climate Superfund law.”
GAO leaves however this fits in with Vermont lobbying and disclosure laws to others. But the statement did remind us of a recent nod to another, and heretofore even more obscured RFF move dropped into a Fund-pitched story, in the WSJ:
The Fund’s is a very plugged-in group, and its behind-the-scenes involvement in developing this law passed by Vermont/”Plan C”, previously noted here, may emerge in GAO’s recently filed open records suit in Michigan. Relevant, however, GAO has also received two document productions from the Vermont Agency for Natural Resources (which withheld some number of records in full). A few items stand out.
UPDATE: The Regents of the University of Michigan, in its Motion for Summary Disposition and its Reply to GAO’s Opposition (see also here), including through an affidavit from Assistant Professor of Law Rachel Rothschild, insists that all responsive correspondence—that is, about the Prof.’s work developing and otherwise addressing a Climate Change Superfund—was purely personal, attorney-client work performed for the Rockefeller Family Fund.