jeff wood esq
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> === </font></div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10012020/emails-show-us-justice-department-working-closely-oil-industry-oppose-climate-lawsuits"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10012020/emails-show-us-justice-department-working-closely-oil-industry-oppose-climate-lawsuits</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">david h
</font></div><div><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In early 2018, a few months after the cities of Oakland and San Francisco sued several major oil companies over climate change, attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice began a series of email exchanges and meetings with lawyers for the oil companies targeted in the litigation.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At one point, Eric Grant, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, sent an email to Indiana's solicitor general saying that his "boss" had asked him to set up a meeting to go over a plan for the government to intercede in the cases on the companies' behalf. </b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cities were arguing that oil companies should be held liable for catastrophic flooding, sea-level rise and other harmful consequences caused by climate change. The DOJ was preparing an amicus brief in support of the industry, and the Indiana solicitor general was leading the charge by Republican attorneys general from 15 states to also file a court brief supporting the industry.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In another email, an assistant U.S. attorney general referred to the DOJ attorneys and industry lawyers—many of them former DOJ environmental lawyers—as a "team."</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">The messages were among 178 pages of</span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6585281-ENRD-FOIA-2019-05066-Release-Redacted.html" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" transparent="transparent" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold">emails exchanged by government and industry</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> </span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">from February through May 2018 as they worked together to oppose the cities' lawsuits. They were obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) under a federal</span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6598237-NRDC-FOIA-to-DOJ.html" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" transparent="transparent" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" font-weight="font-weight" bold="bold">Freedom of Information Act request</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"> </span><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">and shared with InsideClimate News.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the emails do not reveal the substance of discussions that took place during the meetings, they bespeak the unapologetically close relationship between the Trump administration and the oil industry. They also provide a window into the closely coordinated efforts to block the climate lawsuits between industry and the Justice Department's environmental division, which touts itself as "the nation's environmental lawyer, and the largest environmental law firm in the country."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legal experts say the conversations raise questions about the federal government's objectivity and whether the Department of Justice, in these cases, was acting in the best interest of the country's people.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The "boss" to whom Grant, the deputy assistant attorney general, referred in his email at the time was Jeff Wood, the Trump-appointed acting assistant attorney general leading the Environment and Natural Resources Division.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Wood had landed at the DOJ after serving on the Trump-Pence campaign and after an earlier stint as staff environmental counsel to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, who would become Trump's attorney general.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wood declined to comment, though he cited a footnote in the order by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup dismissing the cases that the federal government's amicus brief supporting the oil industry had been submitted "at the Court's invitation." <span id="docs-internal-guid-47b244b9-7fff-7a97-c7b9-56d002a4c458" style="box-sizing: inherit;">The dismissal is now being </span><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062018/california-cities-climate-change-lawsuits-dismissed-fossil-fuels-industry-rising-sea-levels" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">appealed</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Neither Grant nor his colleagues involved in the meetings with the industry responded to a request for comment. The Justice Department and industry lawyers also did not respond.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20092017/san-francisco-oakland-sue-oil-giants-over-climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">The climate lawsuits</a> that grabbed Wood's attention argue that the companies created a public nuisance—climate change—by producing fossil fuels that become the principal cause of global warming when burned.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The rapidly rising sea level along the Pacific coast and in San Francisco Bay, moreover, poses an imminent threat of catastrophic storm surge flooding because any storm would be superimposed on a higher sea level," <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6596243-Oakland-Lawsuit-Sept-2017.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">the lawsuit filed by Oakland officials</a> states. "This threat to human safety and to public and private-property is becoming more dire every day as global warming reaches ever more dangerous levels and sea level rise accelerates."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The emails cover a period beginning in February 2018, six months after climate cases were filed, and ending in May, a few weeks after the Justice Department filed the amicus brief on behalf of the five oil giants named in the lawsuits.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At one time or another, six attorneys—one-quarter of the attorneys assigned to division's Law and Policy Section—were brought into the loop with industry.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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