Change in the Legal Climate

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

Mark Hemingway

Dec 05, 2016

 

On November 16, United States District Judge Ed Kinkeade ordered Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey and New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman to be deposed by ExxonMobil lawyers in December. The two are further subject to legal discovery from ExxonMobil’s legal team. These are extraordinary things to demand of such prominent public officials; but then again, it appears they have committed extraordinary abuses of their offices.

 

Healey, Schneiderman, and other Democratic attorneys general have been pursuing a radical legal strategy of trying to charge energy companies under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law designed to take down mobsters. And all because energy companies haven't completely subjugated themselves to the policy agenda of climate-change activists.

 

Requiring discovery and depositions from Healey and Schneiderman represents a remarkable turning of the tables. The two AGs have been trying to compel ExxonMobil to cough up decades' worth of records, a wide-netted fishing expedition looking for ways to pressure the company politically and legally.

 

Judge Kinkeade is now entertaining the idea that Healey and Schneiderman might just have inappropriate political motivations. And as it turns out, there's a lot of evidence suggesting that politics, not law enforcement, is driving the efforts against ExxonMobil. Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute has been dogged in obtaining and cataloging public records demonstrating as much.

 

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