rule 24 scam
1/22 wow a new kind of suppression?!
i smell horner
ALLUDES TO cei WALKER SUBPOENA
===
NOT THE EPA
off bs sun logo!
http://epadvocates.org/
RECORDS LAWSUIT FILED AGAINST CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP RE: USE OF DONOR-PROVIDED CONSULTANTS AS CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATIVE STAFF
Today, award-winning independent journalist Rob Schilling filed a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Clerk and Chief Administrator of the House of Representatives to exercise the public’s common law right of access to records. Specifically, Schilling’s suit seeks certain described emails, and any Skype and similar recordings and logs, pertaining to the use by two committee chairs of donor-provided consultants as professional staff to perform official business.
This follows the revelation that Congress also had joined in a practice, initiated by Democratic governors and attorneys general with the assistance of major donors after the election of Donald Trump as President, ofusing privately funded staff to perform official business to advance the “climate” agenda.Public records show budgets for tens of millions of dollars of in-kind gifts to governors in the form of non-employee climate “staff” and media consultants, and that progressive state attorneys general took in donor-hired and -provided prosecutors.
Now, it appears that the House Committee on Oversight & Reform is using donor-provided consultants as staff to guide what Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna told activists to expect will be a “year-long” investigation of private parties, already expanded, for political speech that Rep. Khanna believes has frustrated attempts to legislate the agenda.
Scapegoating congressional failures is not a constitutionally permissible use of Congress’s investigative powers — with or without the financial assistance of activist donors. While the constitutionality of this “year-long” investigation is not yet at hand, Schilling was one of two parties filing two complaints with congressional ethics watchdogs over this work, the Inspector General of the House and the Office of Congressional Ethics.
As the complaints noted, the gray area exploited by some governors and AGs is not present here: House Rules and federal law prohibit private financing of the performance of official House business, in-kind or otherwise.
This new congressional investigation began with oil company executives in October but, according to past behavior and recent hints, seems likely to extend soon to others the “climate” industry views as having impeded its desires. A previous AGs’ campaign noted in today’s suit led to subpoenas to over 100 think tanks, scientists, and others also in the name of pursuing energy companies for purported climate-related sins. This blew up on the AGs when the targets challenged the obvious violation of private individuals’ First Amendment rights, thanks to the subpoena battle fought by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The AG leading that charge retreated. However, many of the same AG offices involved in that scheme then brought on attorneys privately hired and placed in their offices by a group created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg, which offices then resumed the investigations. It has thus become clear that none of these abuses of power, in the name of enormous payouts and massive new governmental authority, were ever truly abandoned.
If anything, they have expanded. The complaint also notes the prospect that the Committee objective is to engineer criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice, in aid of a Biden-Harris campaign promise to engage DoJ on behalf of the climate industry in its lawsuits against private industry. Indeed, the Oversight Chairmen told activists they were eyeing perjury charges against witnesses...a week before any testimony was taken or any questions posed.
Further, however, prompting Schilling’s requests was Committee leadership also letting slip that it had brought in consultants to help guide the campaign, describing them in a way strongly indicating — thanks both to the :{New York Times:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: and the group itself — use of a group funded by Arabella Advisors, the “mothership” behind a Democratic “Dark money juggernaut.”
The suit notes that this expansion of donor-provided climate “staff” comes after previous revelations of a $50 million per year budget request for off-books climate staff for progressive governors by 2020. Then came Bloomberg's millions to staff up AGs to, e.g., push climate prosecutions that — with ever-changing rationales but a constant demand for hundreds of billions of dollars to be politically distributed — appear to be little more than shakedowns.
Now the spawn of both disgraces prowls the halls of Congress, and in this case there is no room to excuse the behavior which on its face violates :{31 U.S. Code § 1342}:, :{House Rules}: and ethics requirements/prohibitions (House Rule XXIV and :{official}: House :{interpretations}: thereof).
Fortunately, the NYT launched the outside consultants’ effort,hiding it in plain sightwith a promotional piece that, tellingly, made no inquiry into what skeptical voices — let alone House Rules or federal law — say about what the Times nonetheless admits (if with understatement) is a “unique approach”. That same article, and the consultants’ website admissions, now tie the hands of the Members of Congress who brought in outside parties on the basis, indeed the confession, that the House did not grant them the level of professional staff the “climate” movement feels it should have to use the power of government to pursue political opponents.
Those opponents have apparently frustrated the “climate” movement beyond the point of caring about rules, a matter which House Inspector General has already declined to examine, about which the Congressional Office on Ethics which has a complaint, and the House Committee on Administration. The latter’s Ranking Minority Member Rodney Davis has already stirred to action out of his own frustration with what he views as coverup by the House leadership.
For now, Schilling’s common law right of access suit seeks to exercise the public’s right to know about this metastasizing of off-books private staffing to Congress, again (as was the case with the AGs) for adjudicative/quasi-judicial matters against private, political opponents.
---
Plaintiff Robert Schilling hosts The Schilling Show radio program broadcast on Newsradio 1070 and 98.9 FM WINA in Central Virginia, and is the founder and editor of a news, analysis, and commentary web site, SchillingShow.com, whose reporting and investigative journalism has been awarded multiple times by the Associated Press and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, including two “Superior Awards for Best Investigative Reporting” from the Associated Press.
:{GAO Board Member Matthew D. Hardin filed suit for Schilling, following requests for the records made in November and December 2021, which all of the named defendants ignored.}:
===
===
Christopher Horner, “Government for Rent,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, September 2018,
https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Christopher%20Horner%20-%20Government%20for%20Rent_0.pdf.
. See also, Horner, “Government for Rent”.
3 https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FN-13-15-42-43-45-46-USCA-slidesand-initial-budget-with-pass-throughs-copy.pdf
. See also, Horner, “Government for Rent”.
CLIMATE LAWSUITS
Democracy Dies in Dark-Moneyness: Soros Funding Behind Off-Books Congressional “Staff” to Investigate Political Opponents of Climate Agenda
21 hours ago Charles Rotter 68 Comments
It represents a test of principle for the Republican congressional minority, “Dark Money” scold Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and any elected congressional Democrats who would like to demonstrate their rhetoric…
democracy Dies in Dark-Moneyness: Soros Funding Behind Off-Books Congressional “Staff” to Investigate Political Opponents of Climate Agenda
From Government Accountability & Oversight
Following up on this story, andrelated complaints filed with congressional ethics watchdog offices, courtesy of **Capital Research Center’s** intrepid Hayden Ludwig we now see that the money behind privately financed congressional investigative staff is coming from none other than George Soros’s Open Society ventures.
Specifically, it appears that $300,000 went from Soros’ c4 (Open Society Policy Institute) to 1630 Fund for Co-Equal Action, with the grant tag, “to support work to enhance congressional effectiveness and oversight”.
Another $282,2000 went to the Hill-support operation courtesy of “eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice in 2019 to ‘provide information and advice that helps members of Congress advance policies and conduct effective oversight.’”
As we now know, thanks to those two ethics complaints and yesterday’s common public right of access lawsuit for records filed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, et al., that means providing off-books congressional investigators to augment professional staff, improperlyfor any Member or office which partakes, to pursue private party, political opponents.
Which is a donor-dangle to Members to violate not only House Rules but federal law, should they bite. Which House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna has confessed to doing. As all laid out in those complaints. One recipient of which, the House Inspector General, immediately waved off as not being his job.Even though it seems to fall pretty cleanly within his remit of investigating management of House resources.
Democracy dies in dark-moneyness, etc. Note that this money came via Arabella’s c4 umbrella group — a hard core political entity, not some arguably nonpartisan c3 “charity” or public education institution. For a slew of quotes and critiques of the 1630 Fund c4 by WaPo, Politico et al. see CRC’s compilation here. So, we now know that partisan financing of prosecutorial or quasi-judicial activities goes beyond just Soros prosecutors, above-board and legal, orMichael Bloomberg’s scheme planting privately hired activist prosecutors to pursue his agenda through state attorneys general officeswhich falls into a much grayer area. It extends to off-books congressional staff, who represent a facial violation (by Members who partake) of House Rules and federal law.
This operation — hiding in plain sightcourtesy of a New York Times rollout piece so clumsily incurious that it never considered the propriety or even legality of what it nonetheless confesses is revolutionary, a “unique approach” now being tried in apparent response to the election of Donald Trump as President — is a pulse-check for the institution of journalism. But, even though it’s people we like, pushing idea we agree with? It represents a test of principle for the Republican congressional minority, “Dark Money” scold Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, and any elected congressional Democrats who would like to demonstrate their rhetoric about good governance is remotely sincere.
---
ref1
big news is developing on the Arabella front.
Last week, the watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight filed ethics complaints alleging that House Democrats broke a prohibition on private financing of official congressional business, and an Arabella-run “pop-up” group is at the heart of the still-unfolding story.
House Rule 24prohibits “outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services” to cover the expenses of a congressional office in order to prevent private interests from gaining untoward influence over public affairs.
According to the complaints, however, the Arabella-run group Co-Equal provided in-kind donations to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in the form of donor-provided “consultants” and “progressive” litigators to help House Democrats with a year-long investigation into private parties whose political speech has “frustrated” the Left’s climate action agenda.
In other words, if the complaints are true, a nonprofit helped House Democrats break ethics rules to go after so-called climate deniers standing in the way of a Green New Dealrevolution. Not good optics for the supposedly politically neutral Arabella Advisors.
Scheming in the Dark
Arabella Advisors is a for-profit consultancy based in Washington, DC. The company commands a set of four in-house nonprofits that collectively brought in $1.7**:{billion:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:** in 2020 alone—and $4.7 billion since 2006—from left-leaning foundations and donors.
Arabella’s nonprofits run hundreds of “pop-up” groups that are little more than websites masquerading as standalone, grassroots nonprofits. Sometimes they operate in twos: Co-Equal is fiscally sponsored by the 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund, while its lobbying arm,Co-Equal Action, is run by Arabella’s 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Enter George Soros. A 2018 document reveals the leftist billionaire granted $300,000 to Co-Equal Action via Sixteen Thirty Fund to“support work to enhance congressional effectiveness and oversight”from his 501(c)(4) Open Society Policy Center—almost certainly referring to Co-Equal’s campaign to illegally fund House Democrats’ climate witch hunt.
Add another $282,000 from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund Voice in 2019 to “provide information and advice that helps members of Congress advance policies and conduct effective oversight.”
Tried and True?
This isn’t the first time liberal donors have tried to “help” Congress pursue their climate opponents. In 2019, Michael Bloomberg funded an effort to embed privately funded lawyers into the offices of state attorneys general (AGs) in nine states and the District of Columbia via the Bloomberg-funded State Energy Environmental Impact Center.
Bloomberg’s campaign effectively bypassing legislative budgets with “private mercenaries” engaged in “law enforcement for rent,” according to Chris Horner, a Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow.In Virginia, Republican lawmakersblocked the effort from reaching the Democratic AG in 2019.
Prosecuting Wrongthink
This time around Arabella’s goal appears to be to help the U.S. Justice Department prosecute climate “crimes,” according to the complaints.
As part of his “clean energy revolution,” Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail to “pursue [polluters] to the fullest extent permitted by law and . . . seek additional legislation to hold corporate executives personally responsible—including jail time when merited.”
Jailing dissenters is now “environmental justice,” to use lefty lingo.
Perhaps its Arabella’s liberal donors who should be most wary—the company isn’t so transparent nor trustworthy as it claims. Far from the boutique philanthropy advisors that doesn’t “engage in any kind of legislative activity,” the Arabella network is DC politics incarnate, according to outgoing CEO Sampriti Ganguli.
This is a developing story with more to follow.
Tags: Arabella Advisors, Co-Equal, Democracy Fund Voice, Democratic Party, environmental justice, George Soros, Green New Deal, Hopewell Fund, Open Society Policy Center, Pierre Omidyar, Sixteen Thirty Fund, skeptics
Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon. Ludwig is a native of Orange County, California, and holds a Master’s of Public Policy from George Mason University. AUTHORED CONTENT
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+ SEE ALL CONTENT BY HAYDEN LUDWIG
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ref2
[no ital]
https://govoversight.org/records-lawsuit-filed-against-house-leadership-re-use-of-donor-provided-consultants-as-congressional-investigative-staff/
**Records Lawsuit Filed Against House Leadership Re: Use of Donor-Provided Consultants as Congressional Investigative Staff**
WEBEDITOR In The News, Private Funding of Government 0
Today, award-winning independent journalist Rob Schilling filed a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the Clerk and Chief Administrator of the House of Representatives to exercise the public’s common law right of access to records. Specifically, Schilling’s suit seeks certain described emails, and any Skype and similar recordings and logs, pertaining to the use by two committee chairs of donor-provided consultantsas professional staff to perform official business.
This follows the revelation that Congress also had joined in a practice, initiated by Democratic governors and attorneys general with the assistance of major donors after the election of Donald Trump as President, of using privately funded staff to perform official business to advance the “climate” agenda. Public records show budgets for tens of millions of dollars of in-kind gifts to governors in the form of non-employee climate “staff” and media consultants, and that progressive state attorneys general took in donor-hired and -provided prosecutors.
Now, it appears that the House Committee on Oversight & Reformis using donor-provided consultants as staff to guide what Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ro Khanna told activists to expect will be a “year-long” investigation of private parties,already expanded, for political speech that Rep. Khanna believes has frustrated attempts to legislate the agenda.
Scapegoating congressional failures [allusion to round 1?] is not a constitutionally permissible use of Congress’s investigative powers — with or without the financial assistance of activist donors. While the constitutionality of this “year-long” investigation is not yet at hand, Schilling was one of two parties filing two complaints with congressional ethics watchdogs over this work, the Inspector General of the House and the Office of Congressional Ethics.
As the complaints noted, the gray area exploited by some governors and AGs is not present here: House Rules and federal law prohibit private financing of the performance of official House business, in-kind or otherwise.
This new congressional investigation began with oil company executives in October but, according to past behavior and recent hints, seems likely to extend soon to others the “climate” industry views as having impeded its desires. A previous AGs’ campaign noted in today’s suit led to subpoenas to over 100 think tanks, scientists, and others also in the name of pursuing energy companies for purported climate-related sins. This blew up on the AGs when the targets challenged the obvious violation of private individuals’ First Amendment rights, thanks to the subpoena battle fought by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The AG leading that charge retreated. However, many of the same AG offices involved in that scheme then brought on attorneys privately hired and placed in their offices by a group created by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg,which offices then resumed the investigations. It has thus become clear that none of these abuses of power, in the name of enormous payouts and massive new governmental authority, were ever truly abandoned.
If anything, they have expanded. The complaint also notes the prospect that the Committee objective is to engineer criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice, in aid of a Biden-Harris campaign promise to engage DoJ on behalf of the climate industry in its lawsuits against private industry. Indeed, the Oversight Chairmen told activists they were eyeing perjury charges against witnesses…a week before any testimony was taken or any questions posed.
Further, however, prompting Schilling’s requests was Committee leadership also letting slip that it had brought in consultants to help guide the campaign, describing them in a way strongly indicating — thanks both to the :{New York Times:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: and the group itself — use of a group funded by Arabella Advisors, the “mothership” behind a Democratic “Dark money juggernaut.”
The suit notes that this expansion of donor-provided climate “staff” comes after previous revelations of a$50 million per year budget request for off-books climate staff for progressive governors by 2020.Then came Bloomberg’s millions to staff up AGs to, e.g., push climate prosecutions that — with ever-changing rationales but a constant demand for hundreds of billions of dollars to be politically distributed — appear to be little more than shakedowns.
Now the spawn of both disgraces prowls the halls of Congress, and in this case there is no room to excuse the behavior which on its face violates 31 U.S. Code § 1342, :{House Rules}: and ethics requirements/prohibitions (House Rule XXIV and :{official}: House :{interpretations}: thereof).
Fortunately, the NYT launched the outside consultants’ effort, hiding it in plain sight with a promotional piece that, tellingly, made no inquiry into what skeptical voices — let alone House Rules or federal law — say about what the Times nonetheless admits (if with understatement) is a “unique approach”. That same article, and the consultants’ website admissions, now tie the hands of the Members of Congress who brought in outside parties on the basis, indeed the confession, that the House did not grant them the level of professional staff the “climate” movement feels it should have to use the power of government to pursue political opponents.
Those opponents have apparently frustrated the “climate” movement beyond the point of caring about rules, a matter which House Inspector General has already declined to examine, about which the Congressional Office on Ethics which has a complaint, and the House Committee on Administration. The latter’s Ranking Minority Member Rodney Davis has already stirred to action out of his own frustration with what he views as coverup by the House leadership.
For now, Schilling’s common law right of access suit seeks to exercise the public’s right to know about thismetastasizing of off-books private staffing to Congress, again (as was the case with the AGs) for adjudicative/quasi-judicial matters against private, political opponents.
Plaintiff Robert Schilling hosts The Schilling Show radio program broadcast on Newsradio 1070 and 98.9 FM WINA in Central Virginia, and the founder and editor of a news, analysis, and commentary web site, SchillingShow.com, whose reporting and investigative journalism has been awarded multiple times by the Associated Pressand the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, including two “Superior Awards for Best Investigative Reporting” from the Associated Press.
GAO Board Member Matthew D. Hardin filed suit for Schilling, following requests for the records made in November and December 2021, which all of the named defendants ignored.
===
biden harris energy: https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2020/11/biden-2020-energy-revolution-plan.-11.09.2020.pdf
===
In Joe Biden’s America, Jailing Climate Skeptics Is “Environmental Justice”
https://capitalresearch.org/person/hayden-ludwig/
not long ago, few Americans would have considered imprisoning their fellow citizens for holding different opinions. Such thinking would be expected in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Hitler’s Germany and viewed as totally at odds with the rights and liberties of their constitutional republic. But now it has gone mainstream in the Democratic Party under the buzzword “accountability,” properly translated as “retribution”—punishment for a morally wrong or criminal act.
Welcome to the age of “environmental justice,” when cultural Marxism—with its demands for total conformity in the pursuit of perfectly equal outcomes for all—weaponizes the environmental movement and the powers of government to destroy the life of anyone who dares criticize the climate activists’ agenda.
The Left’s Authoritarian Heart
At its core is the fusion of the Left’s long war to atomize Americans into distinct, controllable tribes with the sweeping regulatory authority that environmentalists have sought for decades. Brought together, this call for “environmental justice” is an unlimited mandate for the Left to transform the country’s economy, civil society, and institutions to permanently control every part of American life.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider what we’ve learned over the last few months of the 2020 election cycle.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign website hosts a lengthy fact sheet detailing his “clean energy revolution” (archived here), which promises to “make environmental justice a priority across all federal agencies” and “hold polluters accountable”:
On Day 1, Biden will require public companies to disclose climate-related financial risks. . . . In his first year, he’ll work to enact legislation requiring polluters to bear the full cost of their climate pollution. But that’s not all: Biden will direct his EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] and Justice Department topursue these cases to the fullest extent permitted by law and . . . seek additional legislation to hold corporate executive personally responsible—including jail timewhen merited [emphasis added].
In the first presidential debate in September, Biden reminded the country that “I am the Democratic Party right now,” and Americans ought to take him at his word. Eco-authoritarianism is now the position of that party in Biden’s America.
A Tyranny, If They Can Keep It
Normalizing the punishment of individuals with “wrong” opinions is the ultimate goal of the radical environmental movement, which coined “environmental justice.”
In 2008, then-NASA senior director James Hansen told Congress that fossil fuel company “CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.” After Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, a number of outraged leftist groups—wrongly convinced that global warming is exacerbating natural disasters—opined that “climate change deniers” ought to be imprisoned. “Put officials who reject science in jail,” tweeted Brad Johnson of the super PAC Climate Hawks Vote.
But jailing the opposition for wrongthink is a perennial wish on the Left.
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) announced on national television during a 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate his intent to “prosecute the fossil fuel executives who knowingly destroyed the planet” and are “probably criminally liable because they have lied and lied and lied.”
“Climate change denial should be a crime,” writes the Outline, so that “profiteers and ideologues” can’t be allowed “to place the public in danger without consequence.” The libertarian-turned-leftist Niskanen Center has argued that “oil companies should be held accountable for climate change” through lawsuits. And according to Reason, at least one German solar energy publication has demanded politicians declare a climate emergency in order to prosecute climate “saboteurs.”
The Guardian’s environment editor dismisses all so-called deniers as fitting in one of four categories: “the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool.” Supposedly neutral Wikipedia hosts a lengthy page on the “pseudoscience” of “global warming denial” created to “give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.” Bill Nye the so-called Science Guy has intimated his support for trying climate skeptics as war criminals. *The Nation* has brayed that “climate denialism is literally killing us.”
Science magazine, a supposedly serious outlet published by the serious scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), is a leading proponent of science-activism and population control policies. It recently published an article written about President Donald Trump’s sinister efforts to “keep researchers who reject climate science in place” in a Biden administration.
The website for the 2016 global warming “propagandumentary” film Before the Flood(starring self-styled climate guru Leonardo de Caprio) features an FBI’s Most Wanted–style list of the “Top 10 Climate Deniers” authored by the director of DeSmogBlog, a far-left Canadian blog reportedly funded by the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation.
Disturbingly, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) Office of Planning and Research—a government agency—hosts an entire webpage identifying “the Deniers,” a “small but vocal group [that] has aggressively spread misinformation about [climate] science,” and the conservative foundations funding their nefarious efforts. (Not a peep on the much larger foundations busily funding the Climageddon crowd’s own activism.)
In 2016, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch publicly considered prosecuting members of the oil and gas industry who have constructed a “climate denial apparatus.”
UNESCO, a United Nations education and science group, has published at least one article by a British professor of political theory condemning oil use as “postericide” (an invented word for the murder of future generations) and bemoaning the right of nations to withdraw from international global warming agreements. And who’s to blame for this mess? She writes:
The epicentre of this activity is in the United States. A set of Conservative think-tanks has deliberately deceived the public and policymakers about the realities of climate change. . . .
. . . The time has come to prosecute them for postericide.
Green Is the New Red
This is the language of violent revolution and Soviet-style “comrades’ courts,” where justice goes to die. But don’t take my word for it—Marxist-Leninists have been arguing as much for years. The International Committee of the Fourth International, a communist group, has argued that global warming requires the advent of a single, global communist state able to control the worldwide means of production and flow of resources.
The editor of Ireland’s Marxist Review has called socialism “the only realistic solution to climate change,” praising Swedish eco-firebrand Greta Thunberg for mocking capitalist “fairy tales of eternal growth.” Australia’s Freedom Socialist Party wrote last year that “global warming demands fundamental change, not market ‘solutions’”—adding that “there is something deliciously communistic about a power plant on every roof, contributing to the common energy pool!”
In the United States, the Socialist Workers Party has hailed the Green New Deal—which would effectively ban air travel and non-electric cars, guarantee federal jobs to everyone, and attempt the impossible by mandating that 100 percent of the country’s energy come from renewables—as a “tremendous opportunity to organize around the most comprehensive and radical climate reform proposal put forward to date on a national level—not just in the U.S., but possibly anywhere.”
There’s a good reason for why: Equality of outcome and unprecedented power to regulate Americans’ daily lives promised by environmentalism are the two pillars of socialism in the United States.
They don’t support just a socialist transformation of the economy, but a complete rewriting of the relationship between individuals and the government as understood by Western civilization for centuries. In the 21st century, tyrants wear green.
Tags: eco-marxism, environmentalism, Green New Deal, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, marxism, UNESCO
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WHY DO THEY NEED A PATSY FRONT?
bs
After The Sneaks disbanded in 1984, I kept my hand in music through participation in a number of great bands: Blue Frontier, The Prime Movers, Chagall, and
. (There was even a brief re-formation of The Sneaks in the early 90s.) In 1989 I became involved in
through my church, and in 2003, I released my first solo CD entitled, Sing a Psalm. My latest music is
.
In 1996, my wife and I concluded that for a variety of reasons, California would no longer be our home. After conducting two subsequent nationwide searches, in 1998 we pulled up stakes and moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. (No, Californians, you don’t fall off the earth once you pass Las Vegas.)
In 2002, after experiencing what I perceived to be a broken and corrupt city government, totally unknown and against all odds, I decided to run for a seat on Charlottesville’s City Council. In an historic upset, I was elected and served a single four-year term, consistently speaking out against the local political "machine" and shaking up the status quo in the process.
Upon conclusion of my local government experience, I was invited to host a radio talk program for Newsradio 98.9 FM and AM 1070 WINA. The Schilling Show airs daily from 12 to 2 PM across central Virginia. I'm also the proprietor of The Schilling Show Blog.
My wife Joan and I are proud parents of an amazing son and two beautiful daughters.
What remarkable and great days those were for me, and for us as a band. No matter how old I get, I still remember how it felt to be in the Sneaks, and in many ways, I feel like I still am in the Sneaks. I'm grateful for this wonderfully unique experience and for the lifelong friendships with Pat, Greg and Brett (and many others) that followed.
===
the hook
COVER- Limbaugh, Hannity... Schilling? Is the former councilor the next radio talk star?
By LINDSAY BARNES | LINDSAY@READTHEHOOK.COM
Published online 7:00am Thursday Jun 25th,2009
and i..
On Friday, June 19, he opened his noon radio show by dubbing Congressman Tom Perriello (D-Ivy) "a boy doing a man's job" and a "lapdog" of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). He decried the closure of the U.S. prison at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay "a disgrace," and blasted City Hall for an alleged "attack on local media."
And that's just in the first segment.
To read such statements in black and white, it might seem that Rob Schilling is a stereotypical right-wing talk radio loudmouth. Yes, he is a pull-no-punches conservative, but the easy charm of his Schilling Show is that such lines are delivered with such calm that he sounds more like a courteous next-door neighbor than a microphone-equipped agitator.
But is the incendiary nature of such comments merely flying under a blanket of mild-mannered cloud cover?
Is Schilling, who broadcasts weekdays on WINA AM 1070, really any different from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Michael Savage, the four top-rated radio talk shows of last year, according to trade publication Talkers Magazine?
For starters, the Charlottesville talker has actually held elected office. In 2002, Schilling won a seat on Charlottesville City Council as a Republican, the first non-Democrat to win a seat since 1986. For another, he sports none-too-conservative shoulder-length hair.
While the latter may not be evident to radio listeners, his mane would set him apart should he ever make the leap to television. He certainly didn't look like any other conservative commentator on Fox News Channel when he was invited on the network's Fox & Friends earlier this month.
As the political right attempts to rehab its image after monumental losses in the 2008 election, might a long hair-wearing, goatee-growing, guitar-playing, rabble-rousing, voice crying from deep inside "the People's Republic of Charlottesville" be the fresh new face of American conservatism?
Guitar hero
Had you told a young, twenty-something Schilling in the early '80s that at age 47 he'd be making a living on the radio, it would have come as no surprise. Only he would have assumed it was on the FM dial. For the young Schilling was dead set on stardom of a different sort, as a guitarist in the Los Angeles-based band the Sneaks.
"We were what I like to call power pop," says Schilling, in a recent interview. "For a while in the early '80s, we tried to do the new wave thing. That was actually the last time I wore my hair short, because everyone in new wave was wearing short hair."
To look at
, it seems Schilling had a kinetic performance style, often pogo-ing all over the stage, frenetically strumming his Fender Stratocaster. His fashion choices were equally eye-catching, with Schilling having a penchant for rainbow pinstripes, sometimes combined with biker boots. But even then, making a living as an entertainer, working in the usually left-leaning showbiz industry, living in the left-leaning Los Angeles area, Schilling says he was a conservative.
"One of the things I loved to do then that I still do now is look at my water bill," says Schilling. "I love to look at my water bill and see how much money I've saved. From a very young age, I'd wanted to buy a house, and I knew I had to be conservative with my money."
That dream would be put off through much of the '80s and '90s, as Schilling continued to spend much of his time on the road as a rock 'n roller playing with several more groups like Chagall, Blue Frontier, and the Prime Movers, with whom he had played a series of dates opening for Thomas Dolby not long after Dolby's "She
reached the Billboardtop 10.
Yet, by 1998, wanting to start a family with his wife Joan, Schilling decided to leave the L.A. area.
"It was getting to be too much of a metropolis, and we had come to Charlottesville on our honeymoon in 1991," he says. "We just loved the area, and it kept coming up in our searches for the best places to live. So we came and first we lived out in Fork Union, but then we bought a house in the city in 1999."
Little did Schilling know at the time, but this purchase would not just be the realization of a lifelong dream, but also the beginning of a new career.
'I'd had enough'
When Schilling bought his new place in downtown Charlottesville, it was, to say the least, a fixer-upper.
"Have you ever seen The Munsters?" says Schilling. "This looked like 1313 Mockingbird Lane."
While Schilling says he fully intended to spruce up his new home, he wanted to take his time and make sure he was getting the best deals. The City of Charlottesville wasn't as willing to wait.
"As soon as I moved in, I got a letter," recalls Schilling, "that basically said, 'You have two weeks to paint your house, or we'll come and do it for you and charge you for the privilege.' I couldn't believe they had the nerve to send that kind of letter."
Outraged, Schilling wrote a letter back expressing his dismay.
"They wrote back and said that maybe they could have phrased it better, but that they weren't changing their position," says Schilling. "I'd had enough."
At that point, the new Charlottesville resident, who has made his living for over 20 years as a realtor, made two decisions that introduced himself to the neighborhood. The first was that he reached back into his new wave rock 'n roll past and painted his house bright pink.
"I'd always wanted a pink house," says Schilling. "This seemed like as good a time as any."
The second was that, when the next City Council elections came up three years later, he would seek a seat on the five-person board as a Republican.
Uphill battle
It was a tall task. No Republican had been elected to City Council since 1986, when insurance firm owner and philanthropist Darden Towe earned a single term.
"I had thought about running for office back in California," says Schilling, "but there was always a line to be the next candidate. Here, I approached the local Republican party, and there was no line at all."
So in 2002, Schilling began the work of campaigning door-to-door as a self-styled "outsider." Considering that President Bush had only garnered only 30 percent of the city's electorate two years earlier, the odds were stacked against any member of the GOP. But Schilling did have one thing going for him: his hair.
"I remember once, a senior citizen answered the door," recalls Schilling, "and I told her I was a Republican running for City Council. She later conveyed to me that she had showed her daughter a picture of me and asked, 'What do you think of a Republican who looks like that?' And she thought about it and finally said, 'He looks honest.'"
With his unconventional tresses matching his unconventional politics (in Charlottesville at least), Schilling managed to build a coalition of those who didn't necessarily agree with him, but believed City Hall needed a voice of dissent. By the time the election rolled around in May 2002, the coalition crested.
"I had a number of people come up to me and say, 'I've never voted for a Republican in my life,'" says Schilling. "I even had one woman come up to me and give me her stub from the voting machine and told me that voting for me as a Republican was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do."
By the time the vote was tallied on May 7, Schilling had edged out a victory by the smallest of margins. Out of 7,396 votes cast, Schilling had won one of the two open seats by 127 votes.
'Dr. No'
According to Schilling, his fellow councilors– all Democrats– greeted him with a healthy serving of skepticism.
"I remember going on the first City Council retreat," says Schilling, "and Kevin Lynch comes up to me and asks, 'How long have you worn your hair like that?' As if I had grown it out to give me some sort of authenticity or not to look like a Republican."
While Schilling has worn his hair this way since the end of his new wave musical days, he says the reason for the choice is simple.
"I just like wearing it this way," says Schilling. "In some ways it's become my brand. I may even cut it one day if I feel like it."
While Lynch says he doesn't recall the conversation, he does remember being hopeful that he might find a new ally, a budget hawk on Council.
"We're both fiscal conservatives," says Lynch. "Rob believes government shouldn't be spending your money, period, and I believe government should be spending your money wisely."
Fellow Councilor Blake Caravati sensed early that he would "totally disagree with his approach to civics," he too had a feeling that he may be able to use Schilling to his political advantage.
"I called him 'Dr. No,'" says Caravati. "So the trick became that if I opposed something on Council, all I had to do was find one other vote, because I knew Rob was going to vote against it anyway."
"I take that as a compliment," says Schilling of Caravati's moniker. "City Council needs to have that kind of scrutiny."
Yet both Lynch and Caravati say it was precisely Schilling's lack of scrutiny on details that made for his biggest weakness as a Councilor.
"He would request these stacks and stacks of documents on any given proposal," says Caravati, "and then when it would come time to debate the issue, he would ask very general questions that showed he hadn't read a word of it."
Lynch is a little more charitable.
"He wasn't really concerned with the nuts and bolts of how to streamline the budget," says Lynch. "When it would come time to cut $100,000 in the budget, I would actually try to figure out a way to do it, whereas Rob would go to the City employees and say, 'Get me something $100,000 cheaper.' It's essentially asking people how they can do their jobs for cheaper, and most people's response would be 'You're lucky I'm doing this at the price I'm doing it.'"
Schilling disagrees with the allegation that he didn't apply enough specific scrutiny to his work as a City Councilor, and says that the proof is in the reaction of city staff.
"I've had city employees tell me," says Schilling, "that their bosses would come to them and say, 'Be able to justify every dollar of your budget, because Rob Schilling is going to be asking questions about it.' If they're scared of me, that's great because that means there's somebody there minding the store."
He recently uncovered school book dumping at Albemarle High. He also made an issue of a City policy to give public school students–- whom Schilling called "indoctrination hostages"–- a lower price at public pools. But Schilling firmly disagrees with the notion that he opposed everything.
"I pushed hard for an elected school board," says Schilling. "I went door-to-door fighting for that and when we put it on the ballot, people were overwhelmingly in favor of it."
His efforts paid off in 2005 when Charlottesville voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum for elected school boards, something the Democratic machine had fought. Moreover, Schilling suspects Caravati's and Lynch's claims have more to do with their prickly political relationship with him. Then again, Schilling says he never tried to make friends.
"I never reached out to them because there was no reason to reach out to them," says Schilling. "The bottom line was that I wanted to cut taxes and make the budget smaller. Nobody else was joining me in that, because they had too many constituencies to buy by funding pet programs with city tax dollars."
His days on Council would be short-lived, however. In 2006, Democrats Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro trumped Schilling in his re-election campaign, earning 39 and 37 percent to Schilling's 24 percent. Still, Schilling says this was not a referendum on him as a councilor.
"I didn't lose the coalition. If anything, my coalition grew," says Schilling. "I had more votes cast for me the second time, and I got the endorsements from people like the head of the NAACP and lots of other prominent people. In the end, the City Democratic machine got turnout way up, and it was just a bad year to be a Republican."
Not that Schilling would go quietly.
Airing grievances
Within a few months of his November 2006 defeat, Schilling says WINA radio began talks with him about doing a show.
"I'd never done radio before," says Schilling, "but, then again, I'd never run for office before either."
At first he became a temporaryreplacement for Dick Mountjoy, as the veteran morning show host underwent treatment for tongue cancer. But neither he nor WINA management felt this was the right format.
"In the morning, it was difficult," says Schilling, "because with all the news and commercial breaks, it was hard to really give some of the stories the time I needed to tell them. Plus, there were definitely some things I said that made some people in the building uncomfortable."
But rather than cut him loose completely, WINA found a home for Schilling three months later at 1pm every weekday. Given that much of the rest of WINA's late morning and afternoon lineup consisted of right-wing talkers like Neal Boortz and Laura Ingraham, it seemed natural to give Schilling an hour each day with which he says he got to do what what he pleased.
Schilling says it didn't take long for his audience to grow, simply because his term on City Council meant that he was the only one capable of doing his kind of show.
"I set out to be someone who speaks truth to power, stands up for what he believes in, and do that with particular focus on local government and local schools," says Schilling. "Nobody else is in a position to do that the way I did it because I have the advantage of being an outsider who's been on the inside. I know where the bodies are buried."
Still, Schilling's approach is not about decibels but ideas. For instance, he maintains an oft-updated blog, and he moderated a June 17 debate on the area's controversial water plan in which both sides treated each other respectfully.
"I don't think of someone like Rush Limbaugh as a screamer, and I have great admiration for him," says Schilling, "but yes, I do have my own style, and while I do sometimes raise my voice, I really only do it when something gets me really upset. Otherwise, I'm here to have a dialogue with people."
For 10 months, Schilling developed a steady following among those who appreciated his speak-softly-but-carry-a-big-stick style.
"He's providing information nobody else is providing," says listener Linda McRaven. "He doesn't put up with any nonsense, calls a spade a spade, and calls himself what he is–- a conservative. You can't find that anywhere else in local media."
Then the bottom fell out of the economy for Charlottesville Radio Group, its parent company Michigan-based Saga Communications, and the nation at large in the fall of last year. On December 19, WINA management called Schilling in for a meeting.
"I had just finished my show, and they called me in, said that local radio was expensive to produce," says Schilling, "and that I had just done my last show."
Back from the dead
It took less than one month without Schilling for WINA management to persuade Saga's corporate office to bring Schilling back by popular demand.
"I wrote letters, I made phone calls, I wrote e-mails," says McRaven. "I told them that if they wanted to use their airwaves to just read the city and county press releases, that was fine, but that I wouldn't be listening. I wanted to hear the light being shined where nobody else was shining it."
For Schilling it was the first time he realized just how many people were listening, let alone caring what he had to say.
"It was humbling," says Schilling. "It was the last thing I expected to happen."
Not only was Schilling back, but he was also given a second hour, now running weekdays from noon to 2pm.
"My sense was that it had struck a chord," says Schilling, "there was enough of a demand out there for what I do, and I'm happy to do it."
WINA management did not return the Hook's calls for comment for this story.
Should the time ever come when Schilling gets the axe again, it may be that he finds a new home on a bigger stage.
Going national
On May 3, 2007, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, 10 people stood onstage before MSNBC's cameras for the first debate among the candidates for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States. While they hailed from Massachusetts to California and eight states in between, and came from varied professional backgrounds, there was one common trait plainly obvious to anyone watching, they were all white men over the age of 50.
Since a 47-year-old African-American man became the Democratic nominee, and ultimately the president by a wide margin, conservatives have made efforts to present a more diversified image.
In August 2008, 44-year-old Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin became the first woman to appear on the national GOP ticket when she became the party's vice presidential nominee. In January of this year, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele became the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee.
While it's true Rob Schilling is a white male approaching 50, and prefers to be called a "conservative" rather than a Republican, the fact that he looks more like Jack Sparrow than Jack Kemp makes him an intriguing choice to speak for the American right. He certainly didn't look like any other right-winger on the Fox News Channel on June 3, when he made his national television debut.
The issue he was there to discuss was an example of what Schilling does nearly every week on his show: take a listener tip on a story that no other member of the local media has covered– and run with it.
"A parent came to me and told me about some liberal indoctrination that was going on at their child's school," says Schilling, "and they had the photographic evidence to prove it."
And so on Sunday, May 31, Schilling penned a piece on SchillingShow.com, complete with the pictures, calling out Albemarle County Schools officials to explain whyHenley Middle School social studies teacher Margie Shepherd had bingo cards mocking Sarah Palin, posters promoting the United Nations, and bumper stickers like "Good Planets Are Hard to Find" and other materials Schilling found improper for "captive government school students."
By Monday, June 1, he had discussed the matter on his show, and the next day received a call from a Fox News producer in New York asking him to come on Fox & Friends the next morning to take the issue national.
"There's no business having this up on the wall," Schilling told television viewers. "The election was six months ago. What purpose is it serving?"
However, Schilling admits to the Hook that he never contacted Ms. Shepherd to ask those very questions.
"I'm not a journalist; my program is an advocacy program," Schilling responds. "So I'm not going to call her up. My show is a show of my opinions. That's different from what you do. So I'm not going to call her up and say 'Oh let's come to a conclusion we can all feel good about.'"
The Hookdid contact Ms. Shepherd, but she did not return our calls.
Schilling said he felt an immediate effect of going on Fox News.
"I was getting e-mails and phone calls from all over the country, and our website traffic increased to 20 times over normal," says Schilling. "This is something that's clearly a national problem, and I wanted to speak up about it."
Rob on the rise?
Does this mean we'll be seeing more of Schilling in a national forum?
"I'm open to whatever God has in store for me," says Schilling. "I never planned on serving on City Council, and I never planned on hosting a radio show either."
Regardless of whether he ever expands beyond the Charlottesville market, Schilling says he will never compromise his values or his style, and will ultimately let the market decide.
"If people don't like it," he says. "There's always NPR."
Earlier this month, Schilling made his national television debut on Fox & Friends to slam an Albemarle County teacher's alleged political indoctrination of students.
---
ref3 rule 24 complaint
see all below
https://govoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Complaint-to-House-Inspector-General.pdf
12 pp
January 13, 2022 Mr. Michael Ptasienski Inspector General United States House of Representatives 386 Ford Building Washington, DC 20515-9990 Via Email to: HouseIG@mail.house.gov Dear Inspector General Ptasienski, We write pursuant to Res. 423, the House Administration Reform Resolution of 1992 amending the Rules of the House of Representatives. As noted by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11024.pdf) (emphases added): The House IG is authorized to accept alleged violations of law or misconduct by House employees and to investigate … acceptance of gratuities, mismanagement and waste of funds, conflicts of interest, abuse of authority, theft or abuse of government property, computer crimes, purchase card fraud, improper use of House resources, and violations related to administration of the House. Should the IG receive information outside of its authority, it is to refer the information to other House entities (e.g., the House Ethics Committee), or non-congressional entities (e.g., the Department of Veterans Affairs), as appropriate. The following information pertains to the use of privately financed or unpaid services and other in-kind support for the performance of official House business. It specifically suggests, in some detail, that outside parties are underwriting the provision of outside professional staff to, at minimum, the House Committee on Oversight & Reform, including specifically for a recently initiated “year-long” investigation that includes subpoenas issued to other private parties. This development, which on its face is in violation of House Rules (XXIV) and ethics requirements, represents the extension of a new but rapidly expanding practice of privately underwriting governmental staff, for “climate” policy and even investigating private parties viewed as impeding advancement of the climate policy agenda. This practice appears to have begun in 2018 when, public records reveal, certain governors’ staff prepared a budget for private underwriting of “climate” staff, off the books, on the express reason that “it can’t always be us staff” staffing elected officials. 1 These aides...
Conclusion
Statements including those made by House Oversight Committee leadership and certain
activists strongly suggest that these new hearings described herein are also privately staffed by
consultants provided to the Oversight Committee for this purpose by private donors. The website
of certain parties described by Chairman Khanna, and news coverage hailing the “unique”
provision by at least one of the sources for these consultants, further supports this conclusion.
As with the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ now-infamous Operation “Crossfire
Hurricane,”31 here the public has reason to be concerned that privately afforded consultants
played a role in engineering compelled testimony and subpoenas to private parties, in what is
apparently the first of a “year-long” series of such endeavors targeting political opponents with
the partial staffing by outside, donor-provided consultants, possibly without properly contracting
with and disclosing the relationship as required by law or attestation that the volunteers serve
“without compensation from any source”, or, alternately, neither obtaining approval of nor
posting the required consultant agreements.
For the reasons set forth above we respectfully suggest your office investigate the
propriety or impropriety of the activities described above.
Government Accountability & Oversight32 Robert Schilling33
info@govoversight.org schilling@allhookedup.com
cc: Theodore E. Deutch, Chairman
House Committee on Ethics
1015 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, Ranking Minority Member
1015 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
House Committee on Administration
Zoe Lofgren, Chair
1309 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
==
full complaint no lnx
January 13, 2022
Mr. Michael Ptasienski
Inspector General
United States House of Representatives
386 Ford Building
Washington, DC 20515-9990
Via Email to: HouseIG@mail.house.gov
Dear Inspector General Ptasienski,
We write pursuant to Res. 423, the House Administration Reform Resolution of 1992 amending
the Rules of the House of Representatives. As noted by the Congressional Research Service
(CRS) (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF11024.pdf) (emphases added):
The House IG is authorized to accept alleged violations of law or misconduct by House
employees and to investigate … acceptance of gratuities, mismanagement and waste of
funds, conflicts of interest, abuse of authority, theft or abuse of government property,
computer crimes, purchase card fraud, improper use of House resources, and violations
related to administration of the House. Should the IG receive information outside of its
authority, it is to refer the information to other House entities (e.g., the House Ethics
Committee), or non-congressional entities (e.g., the Department of Veterans Affairs), as
appropriate.
The following information pertains to the use of privately financed or unpaid services and
other in-kind support for the performance of official House business. It specifically suggests, in
some detail, that outside parties are underwriting the provision of outside professional staff to, at
minimum, the House Committee on Oversight & Reform, including specifically for a recently
initiated “year-long” investigation that includes subpoenas issued to other private parties.
This development, which on its face is in violation of House Rules (XXIV) and ethics
requirements, represents the extension of a new but rapidly expanding practice of privately
underwriting governmental staff, for “climate” policy and even investigating private parties
viewed as impeding advancement of the climate policy agenda.
This practice appears to have begun in 2018 when, public records reveal, certain
governors’ staff prepared a budget for private underwriting of “climate” staff, off the books, on
the express reason that “it can’t always be us staff” staffing elected officials.
1 These aides
1 Email available at https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/It-cant-always-be-usstaff-copy.pdf; this and other records released under the Washington Public Records Act are available at
2
boasted of a “plethora of advocate and funder interest” in the project2
, and set forth a private
budget of $50 million per year3
, just for governors’ off-books staffing on climate, with the
admonition, “before you gasp, please note that foundations are currently spending over $1 billion
a year on climate work”4
. Subsequently, a private entity with which these staff then engaged, a
“US Climate Alliance” (a “coalition” with no corporate form but run by the United Nations
Foundation on a contract with the Hewlett Foundation5
), has begun providing “Fellows” to
governors to perform professional staff work to advance “climate” policy.6
A January 2018 Wall Street Journaleditorial on that effort asked a question relevant to the
instant matter:
“World Resources Institute spokesman Michael Oko says that “public-private
partnerships enable governments to hire [sic] experts to advise them on policies that
benefit their constituents,” adding that they are “common across the political spectrum.”
Oh? ... Substitute the Koch brothers for the World Resources Institute, and the outrage
would be predictable. This setup creates real concerns about accountability and interest
peddling. …Where else are such special interest groups paying to influence policy?”7
As the following shows, the answer to that question now includes the House of
Representatives.
Concurrent with this program to staff governors’ offices to promote the “climate” agenda,
activist billionaire Michael Bloomberg gave millions of dollars to privately staff progressive
state attorneys general to push climate lawsuits.8 Public records show that at least eleven state
attorneys general offices brought in at least eighteen privately hired and paid attorneys under this
program to, under the auspices of those offices’ authorities, inter alia, conduct “climate”
Christopher Horner, “Government for Rent,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, September 2018,
https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Christopher%20Horner%20-%20Government%20for%20Rent_0.pdf. 2 https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FN-9-10-20-22-59-62-73-Plethora-ofactivist-and-funder-interest-in-govs-doing-this-copy.pdf. See also, Horner, “Government for Rent”. 3 https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/FN-13-15-42-43-45-46-USCA-slidesand-initial-budget-with-pass-throughs-copy.pdf. See also, Horner, “Government for Rent”.
4 https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FN-1-Dan-Carol-Before-you-gaspcopy.pdf; this and other records available at Horner, “Government for Rent”.
5 See, Horner, “Government for Rent”.
6 See, e.g., emails and other records soliciting participant offices, released under New Mexico, Virginia
and Washington State open records laws, at https://govoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/USCAFellows-docs.pdf. 7 Editorial, “Climate of Unaccountability,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2018,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-of-unaccountability-1515717585. 8 See, e.g., Juliet Eilperin, “NYU Law launches new center to help state AGs fight environmental
rollbacks,” Washington Post,August 16, 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nyu-law-launchesnew-center-to-help-state-ags-fight-environmental-rollbacks/2017/08/16/e4df8494-82ac-11e7-902a2a9f2d808496_story.html. See also, “State AGs for Rent: Privately funded litigators wield state police
power”, Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-ags-for-rent1541549567, and Christopher Horner, “Law Enforcement for Rent”, Competitive Enterprise Institute,
August 2018, https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Christopher%20Horner%20-
%20Law%20Enforcement%20for%20Rent%20with%20Appendix.pdf.
3
investigations and litigation against political opponents and assist private tort litigation, if the
office promises to “advanc[e] progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal
positions” and demonstrate it “needs additional attorney resources to assist” advancing this
agenda.9
Now, the extant record cited herein reveals, that same model of donor-provided private
consultants has begun providing professional staff services to congressional investigating
committees to push the climate agenda, completely off the books, and apparently in violation of
House Rule XXIV.
This evidence strongly suggests the existence of a more fulsome record pertaining to the
use of outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services to conduct and support the
activities of, or pay the expenses of, a congressional office in violation of House Rules, that we
respectfully recommend the IG investigate.
There is an inherent and great public interest in private influence, governmental
secrecy [no public records? if not how do they know about it?] ,
and governmental compliance with its own rules, as well as the nation’s laws. This
extends to the federal legislative branch. The interest is of heightened importance when an
element of adjudication is at play, as with oversight hearings and where, as here, subpoenas have
been issued and according to congressional leadership more likely are forthcoming. It is of
paramount importance that the Inspector General determine whether the process is tainted by
violations of the House Rules or by improper financing of congressional efforts.
Factual Background and Public Interest
October 2021 House Oversight & Reform Committee Hearing
As background, onOctober 28, 2021, the United States House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight & Reform (“the Oversight Committee”) held a hearing it titled “Fueling
the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil’s Disinformation Campaign to Prevent Climate Action”10,
after having requested records from the entities whose executives were called to testify.
News reports state that, the week prior to the hearing, Subcommittee Chairman and coleader of the hearing California Representative Ro Khanna, and full Committee Chair Carolyn
Maloney of New Yok, informed activists this was the first in a year-long series of events and
expressed the prospect of the Committee pursuing “perjury” charges against witnesses.
11
9 https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FN-3-Organic-NYU-Hayes-email-toOAGs-copy.pdf. See also, Horner, “Law Enforcement for Rent.”
10 https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/fueling-the-climate-crisis-exposing-big-oil-sdisinformation-campaign-to
11 “Maloney and Khanna, whose perjury warning came during a call this week with the political action
group Our Revolution, will face challenges from the unusual nature of the event.” Corbin Hilar,
“Lawmakers study Big Tobacco perjury before Big Oil showdown,” October 27, 2021, E&E News,
https://www.eenews.net/articles/lawmakers-study-big-tobacco-perjury-before-big-oil-showdown-2/.
4
At this first hearing, reading from prepared remarks, Chairwoman Maloney condemned
the witnesses for refusing that day to promise no further funding of disfavored speechor groups
including but not limited to industry trade associations; to stop engaging in disfavored public
speech; or to produce “internal documents or internal communications” about their public
speech. (Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xchA94oDXmI.)
The Chair then “announced her intent to issue subpoenas to” the witnesses for internal
records to “the Committee’s investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s climate disinformation
campaign.” (https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/at-historic-hearing-fossil-fuelexecutives-admit-climate-crisis-is-an-urgent)
Already, the extant record suggests that not only is this “year-long” investigation of
opponents of a political agenda also a continuation of a years-long campaign by activists and tort
lawyers to engage allies with investigative power to assist their activist policy and litigation
campaign, but media reports quote Oversight Committee leadership and outside activists
acknowledging that certain of the professional staff work executing this investigation is being
performed by consultants, and that these consultants have been provided to the Oversight
Committee for this purpose by private donors.
Campaign: Background to Oversight Committee “Year-long” Investigation, Subpoenas
Beginning in 2015, there began a series of public-private collaborations to deploy judicial
or quasi-judicial functions of government against political opponents of the “climate” agenda,
are at least in part intended to do so to assist private and governmental tort, “consumer fraud”,
and other litigation targeting private parties’ climate-related speech (infra).
OMG THEY CITE TEAM BLUE ASS-KICKING AS RATIONALE/PRECEDENT TO DISCREDIT FF CEO
The campaign to investigate and prosecute political opponents of the “climate” agenda
then led to state attorney general investigations of private parties andtargeting of more than 100
research and advocacy groups, scientists and other private parties and entities 12 (which
subpoenas were withdrawn when challenged as facially improper violations of First Amendment
rights. See, e.g., "First Amendment Fight: CEI's Climate Change Subpoena," (April 20, 2016),
https://cei.org/publication/first-amendment-fight-ceis-climate-change-subpoena/).
The public record reflects that those state-level investigations were prompted by lobbying
by activists and tort lawyers.13 The public record also reflects that this weaponizationof
12 See, e.g., Valerie Richardson, “Exxon climate change dissent subpoena sweeps up more than 100 U.S.
institutions”, Washington Times, May 3, 2016,
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/3/virgin-islands-ag-subpoenas-exxoncommunications/; Walter Olson, “Massachusetts AG to Exxon: hand over your communications with
think tanks”, June 16, 2016, https://www.overlawyered.com/2016/06/+setts-ag-exxon-handcommunications-think-tanks/. 13 See, e.g., Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Petitioner, Cause No.
096- 297222-18, District Court of Tarrant County, TX, April 25, 2018,
https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Tarrant-County-Facts-andConclusions.pdf; See also, Proposed Amicus Curiae Brief of Energy Policy Advocates, State of
5
government against private parties to discredit, pressure, and evenprosecute political speechon
“climate” was co-organized with donors, activists, the tort bar and what one meeting agenda
released in state-level open records litigation called “prospective funders”14.
The public record also affirms that this campaign extended beyond state attorneys general
to calls by elected officials for, and inquiry by the U.S. Department of Justice into, use of the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (“RICO”) Act against opponents of the
“climate” agenda.15 [CSPAN SEN KICKASS AND LORETTA]
Whether or not the new round of hearings described, supra, is aimed at engineering
referrals to the Department of Justice as part of that intervention by the Attorney General
promised by the Biden-Harris campaign, the information set forth herein strongly indicates an
expansion, to the federal legislative branch, of those previous “Lawfare”16 initiatives targeting
disfavored, protected speech, and those who engage in it. To the extent that such activities are
financed or arranged by private parties targeting other private parties and enlisting Congressional
committees as subpoena-wielding mercenaries, the Inspector General has jurisdiction to
investigate these activities to ensure compliance with the House Rules and applicable funding
restrictions.
Practice of Private, Off-Books Staff Extends to Congressional Offices
As detailed, supra, the use of privately funded and arranged consultants to staff
congressional operations would is represent the expansion of a practice which seemingly sprung
from whole cloth in recent years, in which government at the state level including governors and
attorneys general join in public-private collaborations to deploy judicial or quasi-judicial
functions of government against political opponents of a particular policy agenda (the “climate”
agenda).17
Minnesota v. American Petroleum Institute, United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 21-
1752,
https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/622288_EPA-amicus_brf.pdf.
14 See https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/BOOM-OAGs-flew-in-for-briefingfor-UCS-prospective-funders.png and https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/08/Harvard-agenda-RICO-etc-scheme-players.pdf.
15 See, e.g., March 2016 colloquy between Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) of the Senate Judiciary
Committee and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch at
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4584506/userclip-lynch-doj-discussed-lnvestigating-big-oils-climate-denial .)
Subsequent to this, the Biden-Harris
presidential campaign promised that, if elected, “Biden will instruct the Attorney General to…
strategically support ongoing plaintiff-driven climate litigation against polluters”
(https://joebiden.com/environmental-justice-plan/
16 Memorandum Opinion by Justice Kerr, San Francisco, et al., V. Exxon Mobil Corp, Court of Appeals
for the Second Appellate District (TX), No.02-18-00106-CV, at p. 48, https://eidclimate.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/06/1284000-1284588-02-18-00106-cv-majority-opinion-kerr.pdf, now pending as
Exxon Mobil Corp. v. City of San Francisco, et al., Tx. Sup. Ct. 20-0558.
17 Also see generally Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C., “Private Funders, Public
Institutions: ‘Climate’ Litigation and a Crisis of Integrity” (May 18, 2021)
(https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/GAO-EPA-CCI-RFF-Climate-Paper.pdf).
6
Information in the public record, including Chairman Khanna’s admissions to activists 18,
indicates that among the consultants whom the Oversight Committee enlisted are outside
activists who called on Congress to investigate at least some of the same private parties, once
again, “to request documents and, if necessary, issue subpoenas”19.
Information in the public record including Chairman Khanna’s admissions and other
materials in the public domain, also indicates that two of the outside parties brought in as
consultants to execute this new quasi-judicial pursuit of private parties are part of an organization
called Co-Equal.20
Co-Equal’s own website, and media coverage announcing its “unique approach” of
“volunteer[ing] their skill set to the House and Senate as Congress rebuilds its oversight
muscle”21, boast that the entity was established — as a project of what media reports describe as
a “Democratic Dark Money Juggernaut,” “the ‘mothership’ behind a network of Democratic
dark money nonprofit groups” 22 — to provide consulting services to burnish the staffs of
18 See, e.g., “I know Professor Oreskes very well. We just spoke a few days ago and … she’s informed a
lot of my thinking”, October 25, 2021,
https://www.facebook.com/PoliticalRevolution/videos/398395635078831, at 30:45. Prof. Naomi Oreskes
“conceived” a “workshop” that produced Climate Accountability Institute, Establishing Accountability
for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control (Oct. 2012), [LA JOLLA?] Summary of the Workshop on
Climate Accountability, Public Opinion, and Legal Strategies,
http://www.climateaccountability.org/pdf/Climate%20Accountability%20Rpt%20Oct12.pdf. “State
attorneys general can also subpoena documents, raising the possibility that a single sympathetic state
attorney general might have substantial success in bringing key internal documents to light. In addition,
lawyers at the workshop noted that even grand juries convened by a district attorney could result in
significant document discovery.” Id. at p. 11. See also Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, Exxon
Mobil Corporation, Petitioner, Cause No. 096- 297222-18, District Court of Tarrant County, TX, April
25, 2018, https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Tarrant-County-Facts-andConclusions.pdf, ¶¶ 11-12. Also, in January 2020 Oreskes published an op-ed calling for Congress to
investigate and subpoena energy companies, which the Oversight Committee has now done.
19 Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, “Big oil is the new big tobacco. Congress must use its power to
investigate,” The Guardian, January 20, 2020,
https://YYY.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/big-oil-congress-climate-change. 20 See, e.g., “Khanna said the committee has enlisted the aid of ‘a lot of people’ involved in planning the
Waxman hearings for advice and planning.” See, e.g., Zack Burdyk, “Democrats call for oil company
executives to testify on disinformation campaign,” The Hill, September 16, 2021,
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/572612-democrats-call-for-oil-company-executives-totestify-on, and https://www.co-equal.org/team. 21 Carl Hulse, “Congressional Veterans Pitch In to Rebuild Oversight Muscle,” New York Times, June 22,
2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/22/us/politics/congress-oversight-muscle.html. 22 Co-Equal’s website also acknowledges it operates under the umbrella of Arabella Advisors (“Co-Equal
is aproject of the Hopewell Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. Co-Equal Action, is a project of the Sixteen
Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization”, and Sixteen Thirty Fund is a part of Arabella (see
https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/expertise/fiscal-sponsorship/). Arabella is described in news reports as
“the ‘mothership’ behind a network of Democratic dark money nonprofit groups,” a “Democratic Dark
Money Juggernaut”. Andrew Kerr, “Democratic Dark Money Juggernaut Called Security On Watchdog
Instead Of Releasing Their Tax Information,”DailyCaller.com, November 16, 2021,
https://dailycaller.com/2021/11/16/caitlin-sutherland-arabella-advisors-form-990s/. See also, e.g., Joe
7
congressional allies, “funded by donors …to consult with congressional aides seeking guidance
on messaging or how to move ahead with inquiries” as reported by the New York Times. See,
e.g., “Co-Equal can help balance the scales… It can provide strategic advice on the legislative
process and oversight. And it can connect congressional offices with experts who can level the
information playing field.” 23
As you are aware “volunteer” is a term of art, which does not apply to the described
arrangement (see House Committees’ Congressional Handbook, Volunteers, pp. 7-8, House
Ethics Manual at p. 288, and FN 28, infra). The services as publicly described are those of
“consultants”; and privately supplied consultants performing the work described fall outside of
what is permissible under House Rules and ethics requirements (see discussion, pp. 7-10,
infra).24
House Rules and Ethics Requirements
Such arrangements are governed by state- and office-specific law and regulations. They
are often prohibited and, where not prohibited, are subject to certain approval and disclosure
requirements. The record shows that these limitations and even prohibitions are not always
followed.
Here, as you are aware, the U.S. House of Representatives’ rules prohibit the use of
outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services to conduct and support the
activities of, or pay the expenses of, a congressional office. House Rule XXIV appears to
prohibit on its face this practice of allowing private actors to fund or staff Congressional
investigations.
The House Committee on Ethics interprets “RULE XXIV, LIMITATIONS ON USE OF
OFFICIAL FUNDS, Limitations on use of official and unofficial accounts”, in pertinent part:
Schoffstall, Cameron Cawthorne, “Liberal dark money juggernaut raises $1.6 billion to flood left-wing
groups with cash, tax forms reveal,” Fox News, November 27, 2021,
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-dark-money-juggernaut-raises-1-6-billion-flood-liberal-groupscash-tax-forms; “Big Money In Dark Shadows: The Arabella Advisors’ Half-billion-dollar ‘Dark Money’
Network,’” Capital Research Center, April 29, 2017, https://capitalresearch.org/article/crc-exposes-leftwing-dark-money/; Editorial, “Questions for Senator Whitehouse A chance to ask the Democrat about his ties to ‘dark money’”, Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/questionsfor-senator-whitehouse-11600729418?mod=opinion_lead_pos1. 23 https://www.co-equal.org/need. 24
The public record shows that two of these same donor-provided consultants who meet Chairman
Khanna’s fairly specific description of who he has brought in for the above-described House Oversight
investigation of private parties, who are publicly listed as founding and being provided through Co-Equal,
explained this model to ideologically aligned governors’ aides when offering their consulting services as
part of the above-described campaign to privately staff governors’ offices with off-the-books “climate”
consultants at up to $50 million per year of private funding. Memorandum and related correspondence
released under Washington State’s Public Records Act available at
https://climatelitigationwatch.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/12/The-Phils-Pitching-Their-Influence.pdf
8
“Proper Performance of Congressional Duties… the provisions of the House Rules
prohibiting unofficial office accounts generally preclude Members from accepting
privately financed or unpaid services (as well as other in-kind support) for the
performance of official House business (House Rule 24, cl. 1). Accordingly, a staff
person should not perform congressional duties during time for which the individual is
being compensated by a private outside employer, and should not use any resources of
a private outside employer for the performance of congressional duties.”25
The House Ethics Committee also writes: “House Rule 24 prohibits ‘unofficial office
accounts.’ [EMIAL ~ BUT THE EMAILS?]
Accordingly, outside private donations, funds, or in-kind goods or services may not be
used to support the activities of, or pay the expenses of, a congressional office. Only
appropriated funds or Members’ personal funds may be used for this purpose. House Rule 24 has
been in effect since 1977. Congress codified this rule into law governing both Chambers as part
of the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 1991.”26
Whatever the role of these outside, private operativesin executing quasi-judicial pursuits
of opponents through public institutions, they have a status which should be definable within the
applicable rules and, in part given those rules, should be known to the public, for whom the
consultants are unofficially but nonetheless de facto working. The public deserves to know
whether the work of the Congress is being financed by motivated outside parties, as the
information presented herein attests seemingly with no margin for explanation otherwise.
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Rules27 are interpreted and applied by the House
Committee on Administration, which interpretation prescribes with specificity the requirements
for use of Consultants, 28 in addition to the House Rules and U.S. Code prohibiting the free
provision of professional staff services with certain, clearly defined exceptions none of which
apply here. The Committee makes clear that, under the Rules, Consultants must be contracted
for, and paid for within appropriated funds, with those contracts subject to an open approval
process and public scrutiny. The relevant language is quite prescriptive (emphases added):
25 Laws, Rules, and Standards of Conduct, House Committee on Ethics,
https://ethics.house.gov/outsideemployment-income/laws-rules-and-standards-conduct.
26 https://ethics.house.gov/official-allowances/unofficial-office-accounts, citing to “See also 31 U.S.C. §
1342 (prohibiting acceptance of voluntary services without specific authorization (augmentation of
appropriations), Limitation on voluntary services, “An officer or employee of the United States
Government or of the District of Columbia government may not accept voluntary services for either
government or employ personal services exceeding that authorized by law except for emergencies
involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.”).
27 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-117HPRT43153/pdf/CPRT-117HPRT43153.pdf. 28 https://cha.house.gov/member-services/handbooks/committees-congressionalhandbook#committee%20staff_volunteers. Detailees must come “from a Government department or
agency”; Re Contractors, “Committees may contract with firms or individuals only for general, nonlegislative and non-financial office services (e.g., equipment maintenance, systems integration, data entry,
staff training)”; and, “The term “volunteer” means an individual performing service in a House office
without compensation from any source. The voluntary service should be of significant educational benefit
to the participant and such voluntary assistance should not supplant the normal and regular duties of paid
employees.” (emphases added)
9
Consultants
Pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 4301, each Committee is authorized, with the prior
approval of the Committee on House Administration, to obtain temporary or
intermittent services of individual consultants or organizations, to advise the
Committee with respect to matters within its jurisdiction.
- The term of the contract agreement may not exceed 12 months or the end of a
Congress, whichever occurs first.
- The consultant is to act as an independent contractor and is not an employee of
the Committee. The Committee on House Administration will not approve a
contract if the services to be provided by the consultant are the regular and
normal duties of Committee staff….
- Pursuant to House Rule XXIII, clause 18(b), consultants are subject to certain
provisions of the House Code of Official Conduct, including the gift rule, the
prohibition against use of one's official position for private gain,and the
requirement to conduct oneself at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on
the House. [SEDITION/ TROLL CAUUCUS?] For information relative to the House Rules, contact the Committee
on Ethics at x57103.
- Committee Chair must submit a letter requesting approval of the
Committee on House Administration along with a signed contract
agreement and resume of the proposed consultant, including, but not limited
to, details of federal service either as an employee or pursuant to contract
agreement with any Committee of the Congress.
- The letter must specify that the proposed contract has beenapproved by
a majority of the Members of the requesting Committee and that no services
pursuant to the proposed contract will commence prior to approval of the
contract by the Committee on House Administration.
The Committee on House Administration will make available for public
inspection a copy of the qualifications of each consultant.29
The record is clear that the parties as described by Chairman Khanna, their own website
and their media coverage are conducting and supporting the activities of a congressional office as
“Consultants” under the terms of House rules and their interpretations.
30 Any claim that the
29 https://cha.house.gov/member-services/handbooks/committees-congressionalhandbook#employment%20law_consultants.
30 House rules and 2 U.S.C. § 4301 define consultants, make clear that these donor-provided professionals
are consultants, and even require public access to the record of approving and engaging consultants. In the
event these custodians claim the consultants referenced herein and who are the subject of the requests at
issue in this matter are merely extraordinarily successful lobbyists, the undersigned note that none of the
parties whom the record suggests are serving in this capacity, or the organizations providing these staff,
are registered as lobbyists according to late December 2021 searches of the House Clerk’s website
(https://lobbyingdisclosure.house.gov/lookup.asp). See also, “Co-Equal is funded by donors, and those
who enlist with it are available to consult with congressional aides seeking guidance on messaging or how
10
above-described parties are not consultants for the reason that the Oversight Committee elected
to not comply with these requirements for engaging contractors is circular logic with no impact
on the actual status or the propriety of the arrangement.
The undersigned Mr. Schilling has requested from the House Committee on House
Administration all requests for approval and contracts for consultants by the House Committee
on Oversight & Reform in the current Congress. He wrote, in pertinent part:
Pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 4301(i), and the House Committees; Congressional Handbook,
Consultants, p. 14, The Committee on House Administration will make available for
public inspection a copy of the qualifications of each consultant” engaged by a House
Committee, or its subcommittees, “to obtain intermittent services of individual
consultants or organizations, to advise the Committee with respect to matters within
its jurisdiction.”
Pursuant to those same authorities I request copies of or an appointment to publicly
inspect all qualifications for each consultant for or to the House Committee on
Oversight & Reform or any of its subcommittees during the 117th Congress. It appears
that this information is the information described in the House Committees’
Congressional Handbook, Consultants, p. 14 ¶¶ 7-8: (text of ¶¶ 7-8, supra, omitted).
On January 10, 2022, the Majority Counsel of the House Committee on Administration
wrote to Mr. Schilling no records reflecting compliance on this matter with the process set forth
in the House Committees’ Congressional Handbook, Consultants, p. 14 ¶¶ 7-8, House Rule 24
and/or 2 U.S.C. § 4301. The majority counsel wrote, in substantive full, “[w]e do not have any
such documents.”
As such, the reasonable conclusion is that the Committee on Oversight & Reform has not
proceeded with the consultants described, supra, according to the process set forth in the House
Committees’ Congressional Handbook, Consultants, p. 14 ¶¶ 7-8, House Ethics Rules, House
Rule XXIV and/or 2 U.S.C. § 4301.
This information also strongly suggests that the Oversight Committee has engaged these
consultants without following the lawful process for doing so, which as the above-excerpted
authorities show includes a required proposal, approval of such proposal, and posting for public
inspection of agreements reflecting the consultants’ provision of official functions. To the extent
that the Oversight Committee is rewriting, in real time, the historical norms and restrictions in
the House Rules pertaining to the use of consultants, it is critical the Inspector General
investigate this activity, to include a careful review of all records relating to this development
and the implications of the “unique approach”, and seeming impermissibility, of privately
financed Congressional activity under the House Rules and other applicable laws.
to move ahead with inquiries in the face of stiff White House resistance. One requirement of participating
is that the staff cannot be engaged in any lobbying.” [CHECK SWAMP THINGS, MANDY? ] Hulse, “Congressional Veterans Pitch In to Rebuild
Oversight Muscle,” New York Times, June 22, 2019.
11
Conclusion
Statements including those made by House Oversight Committee leadership and certain
activists strongly suggest that these new hearings described herein are also privately staffed by
consultants provided to the Oversight Committee for this purpose by private donors. The website
of certain parties described by Chairman Khanna, and news coverage hailing the “unique”
provision by at least one of the sources for these consultants, further supports this conclusion.
As with the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ now-infamous Operation “Crossfire
Hurricane,”31 here the public has reason to be concerned that privately afforded consultants
played a role in engineering compelled testimony and subpoenas to private parties, in what is
apparently the first of a “year-long” series of such endeavors targeting political opponents with
the partial staffing by outside, donor-provided consultants, possibly without properly contracting
with and disclosing the relationship as required by law or attestation that the volunteers serve
“without compensation from any source”, or, alternately, neither obtaining approval of nor
posting the required consultant agreements.
For the reasons set forth above we respectfully suggest your office investigate the
propriety or impropriety of the activities described above.
Government Accountability & Oversight32 Robert Schilling33
info@govoversight.org schilling@allhookedup.com
cc: Theodore E. Deutch, Chairman
House Committee on Ethics
1015 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, Ranking Minority Member
1015 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
House Committee on Administration
Zoe Lofgren, Chair
1309 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
31 See, Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, “Review of Four FISA Applications
and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” December 2019 (Revised),
https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf. 32 Government Accountability & Oversight is a 501(c)(3) non-profit incorporated in Wyoming and
dedicated to transparency in government at the local, state and federal levels.
33 Journalist Robert Schilling hosts The Schilling Show radio program broadcast on Newsradio 1070 and
98.9 FM WINA in Central Virginia, and the founder and editor of a news, analysis, and commentary web
site, SchillingShow.com, whose reporting and investigative journalism has been awarded multiple times
by the Associated Press and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters, including two “Superior Awards
for Best Investigative Reporting” from the Associated Press.
12
By Email: Jamie.fleet@mail.house.gov
Rodney Davis, Ranking Minority Member
1309 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
By Email: Tim.monahan@mail.house.gov
BLOOMBERG SAAG
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/08/keith-ellison-minnesota-bloomberg-climate-lawsuit/
no lnx many
ENERGY
AG Keith Ellison Faces Lawsuit Accusing Him Of Coordinating With Bloomberg On Anti-Exxon Crusade
[pixRep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a candidate for Democratic National Committee Chairman, speaks during a Democratic National Committee forum in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., February 11, 2017. ]
Daily Caller News Foundation
CHRIS WHITE
TECH REPORTER
July 08, 2020
A Virginia-based law firm is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for access to records revealing his use of attorneys financed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to engage in a climate crusade targeting oil companies.
:{
}:
The nonprofit Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) filed a lawsuit Wednesday for records detailing how the Democratic attorney general is allegedly deploying Bloomberg-financed lawyers to advance a lawsuit his office leveled against the fossil fuel industry. The firm’s complaint was filed on behalf of the nonprofit group Energy Policy Advocates.
This is the second lawsuit that GAO, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched in 2018, has filed against Ellison in the last two years. (RELATED: Emails Reveal Role Michael Bloomberg’s Climate Crusaders Are Playing In Maryland’s AG Office)
The law firm’s complaint also reveals that the Minnesota attorney general entered into confidentiality agreements and so-called common interest agreements requiring his office to obtain the consent of the private attorneys before releasing public information about such climate lawsuits.
[pix NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MARCH 04: Former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg addresses his staff and the media after announcing that he will be ending his campaign on March 04, 2020 in New York City. Bloomberg, who has endorsed Joe Biden, spent millions of dollars in his short lived campaign for president.]
GAO attorney Chris Horner believes such contracts undermine open records laws and violate obligations of attorneys general to taxpayers.
“They likely are void as against public policy including that underlining open records laws, and probably violate obligations of state attorney generals to the people of their states by purporting to contract away the public’s right to access to public information such as is embodied in the MGDPA,” Horner staid in a statement Wednesday.
The agreements cover records related to lawsuits two Special Assistant Attorneys General (SAAGs) inside Ellison’s office leveled against ExxonMobil. Ellison announced lawsuits targeting Exxon, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute over what he calls “a campaign of deception” on climate change.
SAAGs are placed in attorney general offices around the country by New York University’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC), which received $6 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2018.
The NYU School of Law launched the group in 2017 to “identify and hire NYU Law Fellows who serve as special assistant attorneys general in state attorney general offices, focusing on clean energy, climate and environmental matters,” according to the NYU Law website.
Ellison submitted an application for SAAGs in March 2019, according to the GAO lawsuit.
He expressed in the application a willingness to do more in certain areas of “known public interest to Bloomberg and his SEEIC,” the complaint stated. Ellison’s application also suggested the attorney general intends on focusing on “multistate initiatives…including…supporting state-led efforts to investigate Exxon Mobil [sic].”
Neither Bloomberg nor Ellison’s office have responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requestS for comment about the lawsuit.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Tags : energy keith ellison michael bloomberg minnesota
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ref https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/09/michael-bloomberg-global-warming/
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emails Reveal Role Michael Bloomberg’s Climate Crusaders Are Playing In Maryland’s AG Office
Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg speaks during the Presidential Gun Sense Forum in Des Moines]
Daily Caller News Foundation l
CHRIS WHITE
TECH REPORTER
September 09, 2019
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s legal fellows are likely too closely connected to the billionaire’s climate change crusading group, new emails show.
Analyst Chris Horner tells the Daily Caller News Foundation that the emails reveal how Maryland is “outsourcing” law enforcement activities to “activist donors.”
The emailsapparently contradict what the Bloomberg-financed climate group has said in the past about the legal fellows it places in state attorneys general offices.
A climate attorney inside Maryland’s attorney general’s office appears to be working at the direction of a group connected to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to documents published recently by awatchdog group.
The special assistant attorneymove to seek guidance contracts claims from the billionaire-financed group thatsuch attorneys are loyal only to the states where they are placed.The so-called SAAGs are being placed in state AG offices around the country by a group that received $6 million from Bloomberg in 2018.
“I’m considering moving from my current environmental-focused position to the energy position that the Maryland AG’s Office has open, ” SAAG John Howard said in an email to David Haynes, director of the State Environmental and Energy Impact Center,which works to plantattorneys in various AG offices.
The memo was published Sept. 3 by Energy Policy Advocates (EPA), a non-profit group founded in Washington state. (RELATED: One Of The Lawyers Targeting Oil Companies Worked In Bloomberg’s Office)
“Would you have a few minutes this afternoon to call me? I want to get a better sense than I currently have about what the Center envisions for these positions,” Howard added in the email, which is dated March, 13 2019. Haynes responded: “I’d be happy to chat with you about this. Could we talk tomorrow.”
Howard has been working at Maryland’s AG office since March 2018.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (C) speaks at a news conference with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (R) and other U.S. State Attorney's General to announce a state-based effort to combat climate change in the Manhattan borough of New York City, March 29, 2016. ]
Bloomberg’s grant went to the SEEI, which is designed to escalate attacks against President Donald Trump’s regulatory rollbacks. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in February that Illinois, Maryland, and other states involved in the program hired attorneys with ties to the billionaire.
The exchange between Howard and Haynes appears to contradict SEEIC’s past claims that such fellows receive orders exclusively from their respective attorney general. The SEEIC operates out of the New York University of Law, media reports show.
The group’s website states: “NYU pays the salaries of the law fellows, but the fellows’ sole duty of loyalty is to the attorney general in whose office he or she serves. All work performed by the fellows is entirely identified and managed by their respective AG offices.”
Analysts argue Howard knew what was expected of him before he reached out.
“This scheme represents a dangerous outsourcing of law enforcement to an activist donor — and further undermines the AGs’ and Bloomberg Center’s insistence that these are simply more bodies,” Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF.
Horner is on the board of directors at the Government Accountability & Oversight, which played a role in releasing the emails.
Howard, Haynes, and Maryland AG Brian Frosh have not responded to the DCNF’s request for comment about the nature of the program. Media reports have also raised questions about SEEI’s role in financing state attorneys general attempts to sue oil companies for supposedly contributing to climate change.
Gavin McCabe, a lawyer connected to Bloomberg Philanthropies, for instance, signed an amicus brief in 2018 supporting New York City’s yearlong climate lawsuit against Exxon and Chevron. Bloomberg founded Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2017 to provide AG offices with attorneys to help push green energy.
McCabe is one of at least eight attorneys hired by attorneys general across the country to work on environmental litigation.
McCabe’s involvement suggestsBloomberg’s money is playing a role in the anti-Exxon campaign. He made himself a part of the lawsuit demanding energy companies compensate the city for the alleged damages from global warming. U.S. District Judge John Keenan dismissed the case in July after months of arguments.
Bloomberg’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Tags : donald trump energy michael bloomberg
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“I’m considering moving from my current environmental-focused position to the energy position that the Maryland AG’s Office has open, ” SAAG John Howard said in an emailto David Haynes, director of the State Environmental and Energy Impact Center, which works to plant attorneys in various AG offices.
The memo was published Sept. 3 by Energy Policy Advocates (EPA), a non-profit group founded in Washington state. (RELATED: One Of The Lawyers Targeting Oil Companies Worked In Bloomberg’s Office)
“Would you have a few minutes this afternoon to call me? I want to get a better sense than I currently have about what the Center envisions for these positions,” Howard added in the email, which is dated March, 13 2019. Haynes responded: “I’d be happy to chat with you about this. Could we talk tomorrow.”
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one Of The Lawyers Targeting Oil Companies Worked In Bloomberg’s Office
cHRIS WHITE
TECH REPORTER
February 04, 2019
Some of the special assistant attorneys general involved in targeting energy companies have extensive ties to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Documents reveal attorneys behind the project targeting President Donald Trump’s regulatory rollback have deeper ties to Bloomberg than previously reported.
One of the attorneys hired by a group targeting Trump and energy companies previously worked in former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ties to a group pushing to sue energy companies over climate change are a lot deeper than previously noted, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Four of the special assistant attorneys general involved in the State Impact Center project have significant connections to the New York City billionaire, the documents show. Past reports fleshing out Bloomberg’s effort focused only on his roughly $6 million donation to the project.
Bloomberg’s grant went to the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, which is designed to escalate attacks against President Donald Trump’s decision to eliminate several of his predecessor’s climate regulations. Documents appear to show Illinois, Maryland, the District of Columbia and others involved in the program hired attorneys with ties to the billionaire.
Sarah Kogel-Smucker of Washington D.C., for instance, worked in Bloomberg’s office as one of his top environmental lawyers, and implemented the former mayor’s bike share program [effing commie?!] in 2013.She began her career as an activist in 2004 with Sierra Club’s chapter before representing New York City in a 2017 lawsuit targeting the Trump administration’s regulation rollback.
Her career at the New York City Law Department’s Environmental Division coincided with Bloomberg’s tenure as mayor from Jan. 1, 2002, to Dec. 31, 2013. (RELATED: Judge Tosses Out New York City’s Climate Change Lawsuit)
Kogel-Smucker was also among the attorneys representing New York City in a federal lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others seeking to hold the energy companies responsible for present and damage to the city from global warming. A judge tossed out the case in July 2018, arguing the court system is not responsible for addressing climate change.
Other attorneys involved in the State Impact Center have an indirect connection to Bloomberg. Jason James, a special assistant attorney general in Illinois, for instance, was colleagues with Daniel Firger, a former researcher at theColumbia Law School Center for Climate Change Law. Firger chairs the Impact Center and heads Bloomberg Philanthropies’ climate change program.
Oregon special assistant attorney general Steve Novick shares connections to Bloomberg as well. One of Bloomberg’s biggest lobbyists, Jake Weigler, ran the former mayor’s gun control advocacy group, Mayors Against Illegal Gunsin 2013. Weigler managed Novick’s campaign for unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 2008. He lost to then-House Speaker Jeff Merkley.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a longtime Democrat, appointed the former Portland city commissioner as a legal fellow to the AG office in 2018. She raised alarms in June 2018 after her office hired Novick.
“Are we sure it is correct to refer to him as a ‘volunteer.’ And not an employee,” Rosenblum asked her deputy AG in a June 17, 2018, email. “Can you be an unpaid employee of the State? As a SAAG doesn’t that make one an employee?”
Her email was included in a June 2018 report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute detailing the extent of Bloomberg’s campaign.
Rosenblum added: “I find it strange to call someone who is working under our supervision with the title of SAAG and who is getting paid (by a third-party) the same as he would if he were working for [the Department of Justice] as a regular [assistant attorney general] — a volunteer.”
Novick, meanwhile, has a long track record of environmental activism and is responsible for promoting a series of proposals targeting oil companies. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Court Memos Shed Light On Michael Bloomberg’s Role In NYC’s Climate Crusade)
Novick voted to divest Portland from the top 200 fossil fuel companies in 2015 during his time as the Portland City commissioner, though he said at the time, “This is obviously just one of the steps we need to take.”
He ultimately lost his re-election in 2016, becoming “the first sitting commissioner to lose re-election in 24 years.”
The billionaire environmentalist has since become something of a major liberal financier. Bloomberg, who spent $5 million on a television ad in favor of Democratic candidates two days ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, said in December 2018 he wants to see any plan potential presidential candidates have regarding climate change to make sure the plan could work. He made the demand while still considering a possible White House run in 2020.
Bloomberg has not yet responded to TheDCNF’s request for comment about what role his connections to Kogel-Smucker, Novick, James and Segal played in their current positions at the State Impact Center. The AG offices at Illinois, Maryland and the District of Columbia have not returned request for comment.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nyu-law-launches-new-center-to-help-state-ags-fight-environmental-rollbacks/2017/08/16
NYU Law launches new center to help state AGs fight environmental rollbacks
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg addresses the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami Beach in June. His philanthropy is helping to launch a new center that will support state attorneys general in fighting federal efforts to roll back energy and environmental policies. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
By Juliet Eilperin August 16, 2017
NYU School of Law will launch a new center, financed by Bloomberg Philanthropies, aimed at helping state attorneys general fight any federal moves to roll back renewable energy, environmental protections and climate policies.
The grant of nearly $6 million, which will establish the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, marks a new step in the escalating battle between state attorneys general and the Trump administration over the nation’s energy and environmental trajectory. Although the center will provide assistance to states regardless of party, Democratic attorneys general have been particularly aggressive in challenging the administration’s efforts to unravel regulations and policies that aim to curb fossil fuel production in the United States as well as restrict drilling and mining on federal lands and in federal waters.
“Every day there’s something that goes on that endangers the health and safety of Americans,” Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) said Wednesday. “Attorneys general don’t begin to have the resources to meet these challenges.
Former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has spent tens of millions of dollars through his charitable group to address climate change, giving $80 million to the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign to shut down coal-fired plants across the country. The new center will provide legal assistance to the attorneys general on renewable energy, climate and environmental issues and will sponsor 10 lawyers on two-year fellowships who will work directly on cases in different attorneys general offices.
David J. Hayes, who served as the Interior Department’s deputy secretary under both the Obama and Clinton administrations, will serve as the center’s executive director. In an interview Wednesday, Hayes said that although “there’s never enough” funding to support this sort of advocacy, the grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies could support not only litigation against the federal government but also enforcement activities on the state level.
How Trump is rolling back Obama’s legacy VIEW GRAPHIC ]
Hayes, who has taught at Stanford University Law School since leaving the federal government in 2013, said he thinks that Trump administration officials “are, as a general matter, very vulnerable” when it comes to court challenges.
“They are moving very quickly, and too quickly from a legal point of view,” Hayes said.
[Interior’s shift on energy advances Trump’s goals-and prompts lawsuits]
Justice Department spokesman Mark Abueg said the department “is fully prepared and committed to defend the administration’s decisions on energy and environmental matters in federal court.”
In many ways, the new initiative reflects the extent to which the parties have switched sides now that President Trump is in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama was president, Republican attorneys general — including Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency — challenged federal policies on issues including immigration and water quality.
Now it is Democratic attorneys general such as Frosh, New York’s Eric Schneiderman, California’s Xavier Becerra and New Mexico’s Hector Balderas who have filed multiple suits against the White House.
Schneiderman alone has spearheaded more than half a dozen suits challenging changes to federal energy and environmental policies, including leading a coalition of 23 state and local governments intervening to defend the Obama-era rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. This month, after 15 states and the District of Columbia sued to implement the 2015 National Ambient Air Quality Standards for smog, the EPA reversed course and announced that it would enforce them.
“There may be no better example of how the Trump administration is quickly and quietly trying to deregulate, defund, and destabilize our basic regulatory infrastructure than environmental policy,” Schneiderman said in a statement Wednesday.
In recent years Republican attorneys general have been able to mobilize substantial resources to support their statewide political campaigns. The Republican Attorneys General Association raised more than $19 million during the 2016 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, including nearly $1.4 million from theU.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform and $500,000 from Republican casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. That total compared with about $6.7 million raised by the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
It remains unclear whether any Republican state leaders will collaborate with the new center. Frosh said the lawsuits he has filed against the administration have not needed the approval of Gov. Larry Hogan (R). But Maryland officials have informed the EPA that they plan to sue unless the agency ensures that coal-fired plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia install pollution controls so their output doesn’t harm Maryland’s air quality.
Juliet Eilperin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Washington Post, editing climate and environmental coverage. She has written two books, "Demon Fish: Travels Through the Hidden World of Sharks" and "Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives." Follow
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https://dailycaller.com/2018/10/13/michael-bloomberg-climate-exxonmobil-lawyer/
https://dailycaller.com/2018/07/19/judge-new-york-climate-change-lawsuit/
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ENERGY
Judge Tosses Out New York City’s Climate Change Lawsuit
Daily Caller News Foundation
MICHAEL BASTASCH
CONTRIBUTOR
July 19, 2018
A federal judge tossed a lawsuit New York City brought against five major oil companies, demanding compensation for the alleged damages from man-made global warming.
“The Court recognizes that the City, and many other governmental entities around the United States and in other nations, will be forced to grapple with the harmful impacts of climate change in the coming decades,” U.S. District Judge John Keenan ruled on Thursday.
“However, the immense and complicated problem of global warming requires a comprehensive solution that weighs the global benefits of fossil fuel use with the gravity of the impending harms,” Keenan ruled.
“To litigate such an action for injuries from foreign greenhouse gas emissions in federal court would severely infringe upon the foreign-policy decisions that are squarely within the purview of the political branches of the U.S. Government,” Keenan wrote for the court.
It’s the third such lawsuit brought against oil companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips. A U.S. District Court judge in Northern California struck down identical lawsuits in June brought by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland.
Trial lawyers with Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP handled climate lawsuits on behalf of the two California cities and New York City in exchange for a percentage of any winnings, called a contingency fee. (RELATED: Trial Lawyers Handling Cities’ Global Warming Lawsuits Stand To Make Billions)
Hagens Berman stood to earn billions of dollars in contingency fees depending on the total winnings, from a favorable judgement against oil companies. The three cities claimed billions of dollars worth of damage from global warming induced by fossil fuels.
Cities and trial lawyers argue the alleged effects of global warming, including sea level rise and extreme weather,violate public nuisance laws. Cities want oil companies to pay for past damages and future mitigation projects.
However, two judges have shot down this argument this year. Both judges found the Clean Air Act supplanted common law on global warming nuisance complaints, and ruling otherwise would circumvent elected officials.
“Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government,” Keenan wrote.
At least a dozen state and local governments have filed suit against fossil fuel companies over global warming since 2017, including six California cities and the state of Rhode Island. (RELATED: Trial Lawyers Are BehindRhode Island’s Global Warming Lawsuit Against Big Oil)
Those lawsuits are also being handled by trial lawyers in exchange for a percentage of any winnings.
Hagens Berman, for example, is also handling a climate lawsuit against oil companies brought by King County, Washington. (RELATED: Washington Joins Growing List Of Locals Suing Oil Companies Over Climate Change)
“This case is, fundamentally, about shifting the costs of abatement back onto the companies,” reads King County’s complaint. “After all, it is Defendants who have profited and will continue to profit by knowingly contributing to global warming, thereby doing all they can to help create and maintain a profound public nuisance.”
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Tags : energy new york city u s district court
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no bio affiliations one of many pp:
Michael Bastasch
Contributor
OPINION
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Tags : donald trump energy exxon mobil michael bloomberg
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