wells, ted esq

=<div>furies cand?
<div>=<a href="https://www.grist.org%2Fclimate%2Felite-law-firms-are-overwhelmingly-working-for-the-fossil-fuel-industry-new-report-says">https://www.grist.org%2Fclimate%2Felite-law-firms-are-overwhelmingly-working-for-the-fossil-fuel-industry-new-report-says</a>
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/exxon-climate-lawsuit-democratic-donor/">https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/exxon-climate-lawsuit-democratic-donor/</a>
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS TARGET EXXON’S LEAD ATTORNEY IN CLIMATE LIABILITY CASE, A PROMINENT DEMOCRATIC DONORTed Wells Jr., who defended Exxon against a lawsuit by New York’s attorney general, has given half a million dollars to Democrats in recent decades.Rachel M. CohenDecember 12 2019, THE LAWYER WHO defended Exxon Mobil against a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general accusing the oil giant of misleading investors on climate change is a prominent Democratic donor who has given more than half a million dollars to Democrats over the last 30 years. 
Ted Wells Jr., a partner and co-chair of the litigation department at the New York firm Paul, Weiss, was Exxon’s lead attorney in the case that concluded on Tuesday, when a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that the attorney general failed to show that the oil company broke the law. 
The high-profile Exxon lawsuit is one of more than a dozen cases brought by state and local governments against fossil fuel companies, with plaintiffs seeking to hold corporations financially liable for their role in perpetuating the climate crisis — and just the second of these cases to go to trial. Over the last few months, students at Harvard Law School have been mobilizing around Wells’s involvement in the Exxon lawsuit, as he is one of the 13 members of the Harvard Corporation, which consults with the university president to decide whether to pursue fossil fuel divestment. A university spokesperson told the Harvard Crimson that Wells recused himself from discussions or votes on divestment once he began representing the oil company. Wells did not return requests for comment. 
“By sitting on this board, Ted Wells can provide cover, and does provide cover, for the fossil fuel industry,” said Isa Flores-Jones, a recent Harvard graduate who is now active with the Sunrise Movement.Attorneys like Wells and their law firms that represent fossil fuel interests while also contributing to Democrats and other liberal causes have been drawing increasing scrutiny from environmental activists who are calling on the Democratic Party to distance itself from the fossil fuel industry, either by swearing off donations from executives and lobbyists or by divesting from these companies.
The No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge, which launched in July 2017, is a cornerstone of that strategy. By taking the pledge, a politician and their campaign promises to not knowingly accept any contribution over $200 from the political action committees, lobbyists, or Securities and Exchange Commission-named executives of fossil fuel companies. 
“We are targeting the very top people at a company, the top donors,” said Collin Rees, a senior campaigner at the climate advocacy group Oil Change International. “We firmly believe that the symbolic act of taking the pledge and publicly saying no is one of the real pieces we need. It changes your policy view and starts to change the political calculus to make [fossil fuels] less socially acceptable.” Lawyers who represent fossil fuel companies are not currently included in the pledge.
Beyond Wells, students have been thinking about how to pressure liberal firms that entangle themselves in the climate crisis. “We’re putting a plan together to organize around when these firms come to campus to recruit early next year,” said Aaron Regunberg, a Harvard law school student.
Kurt Walters, another Harvard law school student involved with these organizing efforts, said it was a surprise for him when he arrived on campus to see how taboo it was to criticize people for who they take on as legal clients.
“It’s been pretty shocking to me the way it’s all been so dominated by respectability politics, where criticizing people for doing bad things is seen as inappropriate,” he said. “Part of it is people who want to believe that going to a firm where you can make $190,000 in a year can still be somehow acceptable.”
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS’ PUSH to get politicians to refuse money from the fossil fuel industry is rooted in recent political science research that found that the more congressional staff met with oil and gas groups, the more likely they were to underestimate public support for climate action. And the more financial contributions politicians received from the fossil fuel lobby, the less those politicians believed that the public really wanted to see bold change.
In the 2020 campaign, all Democratic presidential candidates have signed on to the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge with the exception of the recent entrants, Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg.
Despite this traction, the Democratic National Committee has continued to resist pressure from activists over banning corporate donations from oil and gas. In June 2018, the national party committee passed a resolution pledging to reject campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, yet two months later, it effectively reversed course, passing a new resolution inviting contributions from not just fossil fuel workers, but also “their unions’ or employers’ political action committees.” While the second resolution was cast as a labor-friendly measure, activists noted that energy workers and their unions had been free to donate to Democrats under the first proposal.
Beyond organizing resistance to fossil fuel industry leaders, activists have begun paying closer attention to individuals and institutions with ties to the fossil fuel industry, even if they don’t work directly within the industry itself. These advocates have been urging leaders to be similarly suspicious of how corporate and financial connections to fossil fuels may distort or influence political decision-making.
RelatedExxon Mobil Is Funding Centrist Democratic Think Tank, Disclosures Reveal]
For example, in September on the campaign trail, a 24-year-old activist with the Sunrise Movement asked Joe Biden in Iowa about his climate adviser, Heather Zichal, who earned $1 million from serving on the board of liquified natural gas company, Cheniere Energy. (Biden patted the Sunrise activist’s hand, ignored her question, and said, “Thank you for being … for admiring me so much.”) 
And then there are the attorneys like Wells, who donated $100,000 to Priorities USA Action, the top Democratic Super PAC in 2012, and has given more than $135,000 to the DNC over the last three decades. His law firm, Paul, Weiss, similarly donated $1.9 million to Democratic candidates in the 2018 cycle and has already donated over $740,000 this cycle. 
During a nearly three-week civil trial in November, Wells defended Exxon against New York’s claims that the company had misled shareholders by hiding pertinent information about how it was managing the risk of climate change and environmental regulations. In the 55-page opinion issued Thursday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager accepted Wells and co-counsel’s arguments that Exxon had sufficiently developed a method for dealing with future climate change costs and that its statements to shareholders about those future costs were not deceptive. The judge called the attorney general’s securities fraud complaint against Exxon “hyperbolic” and said that while nothing in his judgment is meant to absolve Exxon of responsibility for contributing to climate change, the AG failed to prove that the oil company “made any material representations [to shareholders] that would have been viewed by a reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information available.” 
THE LEAD ATTORNEY for Chevron in another spate of recent climate liability lawsuits, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., is also a prominent Democratic donor. A partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Boutrous also regularly represents media organizations and reporters in First Amendment cases and has recently been representing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients on a pro bono legal team.
In an interview with The Intercept, Boutrous defended his Chevron representation. “It’s very easy for me to fight these lawsuits tooth and nail because I think they’re counterproductive and just make no sense from a policy standpoint and legal perspective,” he said, adding that it’s not “a proper use of lawsuits to bring cases that are completely baseless as a platform to debate public issues; that’s not really what we should be using the courts for.”
Boutrous has given tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and causes, but argued that political contributions have exaggerated influence on policymaking. Echoing a position shared by many prominent Democratic leaders, he said that taking a hard line against fossil fuel companies could interfere with making progress on tackling the climate crisis. “The fallacy at the root of the lawsuit is that somehow punishing and singling out oil and gas companies is needed, when we need to cope with the fact that we still need this energy. And while we can look for alternative sources of energy [and] technological solutions, one of the best sources for this would be these very companies,” he said, adding that Chevron both “accepts” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings and supports U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. Advocates of partnering with energy companies point to the rapid growth of wind and solar, which has proliferated largely because it’s become profitable enough to do so.
Boutrous, who also successfully represented auto companies when California sued auto manufacturers to demand that they pay for the environmental damage caused by the emissions of their vehicles, argued at length that corporations could be held to account for being socially responsible without, as he put it, being demonized by the Democratic Party. He emphasized his commitment to tackling climate change, but raised particular criticism with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who in September said he’d consider criminally prosecuting fossil fuel executives. Boutrous called Sanders’s position “so wrongheaded.”
Despite evidence to the contrary, Boutrous also insisted that the fear of money’s corrupting influence on politics is exaggerated. 
“I think it’s really overrated the influence that corporations and money have over politicians,” he said. “If you look at all the people who have the right to vote and don’t vote, and sometimes the votes are suppressed, but if you look at all those people, that is an enormous political force. So before we say it’s just money in politics that’s causing the problem, we all need to take responsibility for making sure our voices are heard. The people of the United States need to take responsibility for our country, our climate, and we need to stop blaming everything on too much money.”
Ted-Wells_Divest2update-1576190553Posters made by Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard which targeted Harvard Corporation board members with ties to the fossil fuel industry were hung around Harvard’s campus and distributed on social media. Image: Courtesy of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard organizer Joseph WintersTHE DEBATE OVER how fossil fuel money influences climate policy has been playing out on college campuses like Harvard, where students have been mobilizing since 2012 to get their university to divest from companies that support fossil fuels. Increasingly, students there have been drawing attention to the fact that four members on the Harvard Corporation have ties to the fossil fuel industry. Their goal is to get the entire corporation to commit to divestment by Earth Day 2020.Ilana Cohen, a Harvard undergraduate and leader with her campus’s divestment movement, said her group launched a semesterlong effort at the beginning of the school year to teach students about the ties of these board members. They’ve been publishing information on their website, launching social media campaigns, and hanging up posters around campus. “We’ve worked really concretely to amplify the absurdity of having the attorney for Exxon on that board,” she said. 
Flores-Jones, the recent Harvard graduate, compared it to how fossil fuel companies fund various types of university research and donate large sums of money for new fancy campus buildings, sometimes even named after them.
In 2007, Harvard’s Dean of the Kennedy School of Government announced the acceptance of a five-year, $3.75 million donation from Shell to “enhance and expand University research efforts on critical issues of energy policy.” This year MIT announced that it would be renaming a building where students study climate science the “Shell Auditorium,” after the oil company donated $3 million.
“Like politicians who are cast as ‘pragmatic’ for saying we need a carbon-neutral transition by 2050, Harvard is similarly being played for a fool by these companies,” Flores-Jones said. “It’s these swinging doors of having the credibility to be able to sit on the Harvard Corporation, and be associated with Harvard, while then defending the reputations of these companies.”
Walters, the law school student, said his goal is to continue in his field what began during the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court last year.
“Some people in the legal industry were playing by the old rules, even Democrats and people who believe sexual assault is bad,” he said. “You had them saying, ‘But this Kavanaugh guy, he’s so smart, let’s just approve him.’ Meanwhile, there were huge walkouts with hundreds of students. And so what we’re trying to do is continue to blow up that norm that says it’s more important to be friendly, than to call out people who do bad things.” =<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/05/11/ted-wells-exxon-big-tobacco-nfl-concussions/">https://www.desmog.com/2016/05/11/ted-wells-exxon-big-tobacco-nfl-concussions/</a>
no lnx many, no docs
Exxon's Lawyer in Climate Science Probe Has History Helping Big Tobacco and NFL Defend Against Health Claims
BySteve Horn on May 11, 2016  
Ted Wells, an attorney hired by ExxonMobil to represent the company against accusations it lied about the climate risks of burning fossil fuels, also represented the tobacco industry in the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, DeSmog has found. Wells also defended the National Football League (NFL) in the infamous “Deflategate” matter as well as in litigation over the far more serious issue of concussions. 
Wells has represented ExxonMobil since at least December 2015, following New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s announcement that his office would probe Exxon’s role in funding climate change denial despite its long-held understanding and pioneering research into climate change.
Wells’ name also appears on an April 13 legal filing Exxon submitted in response to a subpoena issued by the Virgin Islands’ AG Office, a sign the “private empire” has retained him for the wider probe being carried out by a group pf Attorneys General.
Wells has made a career out of working on behalf of clients with legal claims often flying in the face of well-established science, with legal industry trade publication Inside Counsel referring to him as a top attorney-for-hire for crisis situations in an April 2007 article. 
A DeSmog investigation has also found parallels in legal and public relations defense tactics deployed by Wells on behalf of those past clients and the tactics currently being utilized for his current big-ticket client, ExxonMobil.
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian of science who has long studied the denial industry and wrote the indispensable book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” sees Exxon’s hire of Wells as a positive and as a potential sign the company sees the writing on the wall. 
“Call me an optimist, but I think this is good news,” she told DeSmog. “The tobacco industry was successfully prosecuted, and, perhaps with that history in mind, the NFL has recently agreed to a major settlement with its players. So perhaps Mr. Wells will guide Exxon towards a sensible path towards the future, rather than a misguided retreat into the past.”
Dan Zegart, a senior fellow at the Climate Investigations Center and author of the book “Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry,” told DeSmog: “Bringing in Ted Wells is a sign that ExxonMobil isn’t thinking settlement — they’re going to fight these attorney general actions tooth and nail. This is a guy who will throw up every possible defense for Exxon, like he did for tobacco. Every move in this playbook has been pressure-tested over decades.”
Exxon RepresentationThis is far from the first prominent lawsuit for which Wells has offered his billable services to Exxon, a company which funded climate denial to the tune of $31 million, by conservative estimates, between 1998 and 2014. 
In the early 2000’s, Wells counseled ExxonMobil in a federal corruption case, with an ex-Mobil official named J. Bryan Williams pleading guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy as part of corruption that was at the time endemic in Kazakhstan.
Wells proclaimed Exxon’s innocence in the case outside of the courthouse after Williams’ guilty plea, distancing himself from Williams by stating that “Exxon Mobil had no knowledge of the over $7 million in secret payments that he received and hid in secret bank accounts.”
Wells, too, provided legal representation to Exxon in the lawsuit filed against it by citizens of Indonesia who alleged they had been tortured by private security guards on the company payroll.
That case, which reached the U.S. Court of Appeals, became somewhat moot when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case that the Alien Tort Statute does not offer non-U.S. citizen victims of human rights abuses committed abroad by U.S.-based corporations a path to legal justice in U.S. courts.
More recently, Wells represented Exxon in New Jersey in a lawsuit filed against the company by the State of New Jersey in 2004, which alleged the corporation’s responsibility for rampant statewide pollution. This culminated in an August 2015 $225 million settlement, far less than the $8.9 billion asked for by the plaintiffs.  
NFL Science DenialYet for most of the U.S. population, Wells is best known for the “tough guy” role he has played in the “DeflateGate” case on behalf of the National Football League (NFL). It turns out that story, like Exxon and like the tobacco wars, has an anti-science spin too.
Embed from Getty Images
In that case, famed New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady faces a four-game NFL suspension for allegedly deflating footballs in a 2015 playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts in order to gain a competitive edge. Wells has provided the NFL with legal representation for the ongoing saga.
But contrary to the NFL‘s crackdown on cheating narrative, the science points to the fact that Brady and the Patriots actually may not have cheated. It all centers around what is known as  the “Wells Report” — an investigation by Ted Wells of the allegedly deflated footballs.
That report’s findings have come under question by numerous scientists, the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) and even the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.
The most ardent criticism of the study centers around the scientific report outsourced to a firm called Exponent Inc. that the Wells Report relies upon to make its case. The tobacco industry also used Exponent Inc. research to claim secondhand smoke does not cause cancer.
“The first thing you know is that when Exponent is brought in to help a company, that company is in big trouble,” Cindy Gage, owner of an environmental and agricultural consulting firm in California, told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. 
While Wells represented the NFL for “DeflateGate,” he also provided his legal services for the much more scandalous — from a human health and public interest perspective — concussion lawsuit the NFL faced, brought against it by over 4,800 former players. That lawsuit ended with a $1 billion settlement, which some players have appealed, and some have pointed to as being rife with loopholes allowing the NFL to get out of trouble on-the-cheap.
A recent New York Times investigation pointed to myriad links between the tobacco industry and the NFL, including overlap in lobbyists and legal representation, though Wells’ name goes unmentioned in the article. Wells’ law firm, though, responded to the article in a letter published by Politico. 
“Tossing around unsubstantiated allegations of links between an industry and Big Tobacco is reckless and dangerous. Like all broad-brush attacks, it undermines reasoned, fact-based debate,” reads the March 28 letter. “In short, there is nothing in the Times’s story that can fairly, credibly and objectively support the false and defamatory charge that the NFL had ties to the tobacco industry.”
Wells and Big TobaccoJust over a decade ago, Wells went to bat for Philip Morris in the United States v. Philip Morris lawsuit filed against the company by the DOJ in a case ending with a prosecution, but with actual penalties tantamount to kid glove treatment. The treatment, which came from DOJ political appointees, motivated lead DOJ prosecutor for the case Sharon Eubanks to resign from her post.
In court documents reviewed by DeSmog, Wells’ tobacco arguments parallel, in many ways, those Wells made for Exxon in its April 13 response to the Virgin Islands’ subpoena. Much of that line of argumentation over a decade ago in the tobacco case centered around proving or disproving that Philip Morris would likely commit fraud in the future if left unprosecuted, a key tenet of a successful RICO prosecution.
Throughout the tobacco RICO case, in legal filings and in the courtroom, Wells emphasized how Philip Morris’ behavior had changed and how it had become more a socially responsible corporate entity. In the main, Wells said Philip Morris had done so by withdrawing from the industry-manufactured debate on smoking as it relates to health and addiction, as well as by deferring to the judgment of the public health community on smoking’s human health impacts.
As a document obtained from University of California-San Francisco’s (UCSF) Legacy Tobacco Documents Library details, Wells cross-examined Philip Morris’ “point person“ — General Counsel Denise Keane — about its public relations website. That site attempted to convey that the company no longer participated in the scientific denial of tobacco’s human health impacts.
“The company’s purpose was, number one, to make in a very public way its commitment to no longer being part of what I would call an old world, but to take a step that would codify really for all purposes going forward the fact that it was going to be aligned with the public health community, that it was going to communicate the message of the public health community,” Keane testified under oath at a January 19, 2005 hearing. “And when we talk about what’s on the website, you know, to me, the guiding principle is communicating the message of the public health community.”
But first and foremost, it appears the website existed for Philip Morris’s public relations purposes. A 2008 academic paper published in the journal Public Health Nursing by Ruth Malone and Elizabeth Smith, both professors at UCSF, concluded the website’s existence did not signify any sort of radical shift in company culture on public health.
That paper cites a June 1999 memorandum published in the UCSF tobacco archives, which describes the rationale behind the website. 
Ted Wells ExxonMobil
“The objective of this is to increase the awareness of our social programs and to improve the public perception of our company in the US during these very challenging times resulting from the very negative environment for our tobacco business,” reads the memo. “Hence, we want to capitalize on this advertising campaign by inviting viewers to a Website, where they can learn more about these programs and Philip Morris in general.”
ExxonMobil currently appears to be positioning itself as having moved away from the “old world,” announcing it would be hiring a new climate change researcher in the midst of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announcing his office had opened an investigation on Exxon.
Keane also declared, under cross-examination by Wells, that her company had, under the auspices of an October 2, 1997 Statement of Position, withdrawn from the debate it had manufactured on the human health impacts of tobacco use. As Wells put it in his opening statement for the federal trial, this served as proof Philip Morris had entered into a ”permanent irreversible” dawn of a ”new era.“ 
Philip Morris Hatch Statement
A similar notion of involvement in public policy “debate” before it had reached an overwhelming scientific consensus arose in Exxon’s response to the Virgin Islands’ subpoena signed off on by Wells on April 13, with the word “debate” used 11 times by the company’s legal team.
Free Speech Attack?Like with the Philip Morris precursor, Wells and the Exxon legal team attempted to convey the company’s shift from student of climate change science, to funder of climate denial and attacks on science, and then the shift back again to being a responsible corporate citizen concerned about climate change impacts and policy solutions. 
“ExxonMobil has publicly and repeatedly acknowledged risks related to climate change” in recent years, Wells and his legal team wrote in response to the Virgin Islands’ AG Office subpoena, citing three example of such acknowledgment in recent years. In so doing, Exxon also claimed the Virgin Islands’ AG Office had launched an attack on its free speech rights and its ability to take part in such debates in earlier years.
“The chilling effect of this inquiry, which discriminates based on viewpoint to target one side of an ongoing policy debate, strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment,” wrote Wells and the Exxon legal team.
The Virgin Islands rebutted Wells and Exxon in an April 25 response. 
“Your argument that this investigation targets protected speech mirrors arguments that were decisively rejected in the United States’s case against tobacco, which held tobacco companies financially responsible for and imposed sweeping injunctive relief to address a decades-long scheme by those defendants to misrepresent the scientific facts regarding smoking,” reads the letter signed by Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker. “If ExxonMobil knowingly deceived consumers and investors about climate change, it, too, is not above the law.”
Numerous conservative groups — some with ties to the climate change denial echo chamber such as Koch-funded groups like Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, and Heritage Foundation — have also called the Virgin Islands subpoena a First Amendment attack.
So too did the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review Magazine. The Free Speech in Science Project, a group whose funding stream has yet to be revealed, has also pushed a First Amendment argument.
“Doubt is Our Product”The tobacco industry is now infamous for writing in a 1969 memo that “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.” Yet, Exxon has even said in its own late 1970s studies that “there is no doubt” that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was harmful. 
Related Reading: “There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s
If doubt is the product, then Wells has produced a legal career representing and defending doubt — from the tobacco wars, through to the NFL‘s concussion crisis and now into today’s “ExxonKnew” saga. 
Wells did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.=drilled 320e<a href="https://criticalfrequency.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d92e27890a6231278f25835b0&id=49a15bcb12&e=7c6cf07754" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://criticalfrequency.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u%3Dd92e27890a6231278f25835b0%26id%3D49a15bcb12%26e%3D7c6cf07754&source=gmail&ust=1583704642515000&usg=AFQjCNH1mvBK3mthcJLm7iH-3CkITZQloQ" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">lite Law Students to Paul, Weiss: Drop ExxonMobil</a>Students at some of the nation’s top law schools are demanding that law firm Paul, Weiss, a top U.S. law firm, drop ExxonMobil as a client.<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://readsludge.com/2020/02/22/not-just-exxon-paul-weiss-is-addicted-to-defending-the-worst-corporations/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://readsludge.com/2020/02/22/not-just-exxon-paul-weiss-is-addicted-to-defending-the-worst-corporations/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>not Just Exxon: Paul Weiss Defends Many Rogue Corporations</div><div>From Big Tobacco to opioid crisis profiteering, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP has made millions from defending some of the most repugnant corporate villains of recent decades</div><div>
</div><div>PUBLISHED ONFEB 22, 2020 </div><div>CLIMATEPRIMARY CATEGORY IN WHICH BLOG POST IS PUBLISHED</div><div>
</div><div>Gin Armstrong</div><div>@gin_armstrong</div><div>Gin Armstrong is a senior research analyst focused on regional and state power mapping.</div><div>
</div><div>See more</div><div>
</div><div>Derek Seidman</div><div>@derekseidman80</div><div>This article was first published at Eyes on the Ties, a news site by LittleSis.org</div><div>
</div><div>There’s no doubt about it: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is one of the most prestigious law firms in the U.S. Its attorneys rake in millions representing some of the most powerful corporate actors in the world. Its leaders serve as donation bundlers for major presidential candidates and Trustees for some of the nation’s most prominent universities. Last year, The American Lawyer named Paul Weiss “Law Firm of the Year” and “White Collar Litigation Department of the Year.” The firm’s New York City headquarters are just a skip away from Rockefeller Center and the Museum of Modern Art. </div><div>
</div><div>Coming out of law school, you’d think that snagging a cushy job at Paul Weiss would be every law student’s dream. But a growing number of law students are pledging to refuse to work for Paul Weiss – or even to interview with the firm – until it drops ExxonMobil as a legal client.</div><div>
</div><div>The campaign is called #DropExxon. It announced itself last month when Harvard Law students disrupted a Paul Weiss recruitment event at an upscale Cambridge, Massachusetts restaurant. Paul Weiss attorney Ted Wells is Exxon’s lead attorney and also a Harvard Corporation Trustee. </div><div>
</div><div>The next disruption was three weeks later at Yale, and, days later, at New York University. This week, University of Michigan law students joined the protests. Barely a month old, the campaign is set to spread to other campuses.</div><div>
</div><div>[pix January 15, 2020 #DropExxon protest by Harvard Law students (Photo: Aaron Regunberg/Facebook)</div><div>
</div><div>Paul Weiss has served as lead counsel for ExxonMobil for years, representing the Big Oil giant against a host of climate lawsuits. Most recently, the firm successfully defended Exxon against a $1.6 billion lawsuit, brought by the State of New York, alleging that the company mislead investors over the risks of climate change. It was only the second climate change lawsuit to ever reach trial in the U.S. </div><div>
</div><div>Overall, Paul Weiss has defended Exxon in at least a dozen climate liability cases brought about by states and municipalities. The firm’s legal tactics on Exxon’s behalf have been labeled everything from “blatantly obstructionist” to “disingenuous” by different state attorneys general. </div><div>
</div><div>Exxon is the biggest oil company in the U.S. It raked in $20.8 billion in profits in 2018. As the world faces a growing climate emergency, Exxon recently announced its intent to ramp up oil production by 80% in the world’s busiest oil field to 1 million barrels per day. This comes as a startling new report just revealed that the level of methane emissions released by fossil fuel companies is likely much worse than we previously thought.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2015, a wide-ranging series of investigations uncovered that, for decades, Exxon had conducted internal research on global warming and knew about the dire impact of its fossil fuel production in driving our growing climate crisis. All this was happening at the same time Exxon was funding climate denialism and working to crush attempts to regulate carbon emissions.</div><div>
</div><div>Now the public is aiming to hold Exxon accountable for this deception – and Paul Weiss is trying to defend Exxon from this.</div><div>
</div><div>Big firms like Paul Weiss face tight competition to recruit talent from top law schools. Organizers with #DropExxon see where they have leverage – Paul Weiss does not want to become the poster child for Big Law’s complicity with our climate crisis, a stigma stuck to its name among thousands of rising law students nationwide. </div><div>
</div><div>The campaign isn’t saying that corporations that destroy our planet should be denied lawyers – but rather, that young attorneys who care about justice have other options than to go work for these firms.</div><div>
</div><div>Moreover, when it comes to Paul Weiss, ExxonMobil is just one of the worst of its many questionable clients. From Big Tobacco to opioid crisis profiteering, Paul Weiss has made millions from defending some of the most repugnant corporate villains of recent decades:  </div><div>
</div><div>Vouching for opioid crisis profiteers. Paul Weiss partner David M. Bernick is a lead attorney for Richard Sackler, the billionaire former president and chairman of Purdue Pharma, and other members of the Sackler family. The Sacklers have faced billions in lawsuits over their role in creating the nation’s opioid crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands. Richard Sackler was a leader of the company as it pushed doctors to prescribe OxyContin, while he blamed victims for their own addiction. Bernick has been a go-to defender of the Sacklers, even appearing on Good Morning Americato represent them. After it was revealed that Richard Sackler called opioid users “victimizers” responsible for their own fate, Bernick defended Sackler by saying he used insensitive language that didn’t “reflect what he actually did about the emerging problem of opioid abuse.”</div><div>
</div><div>Defending Big Tobacco. Paul Weiss represented Philip Morris in U.S. v. Philip Morris, the case in which Philip Morris was finally held liable for systematically concealing the health risks of smoking and marketing tobacco to children for decades. Notably, Ted Wells, who defended Phillip Morris, used an argument in court that was similar to Paul Weiss’ defense of Exxon – that Philip Morris now acknowledges the science proving the dangerousness of cigarettes and tobacco. This is very similar to Paul Weiss and Exxon’s position in The People of the State of NY v. Exxon Mobil, that “there is a serious problem relating to climate change, and we acknowledge that that problem is real and must be addressed.” </div><div>
</div><div>Defending Wall Street’s most egregious crooks. Several Paul Weiss partners, including Ted Wells, represented notorious hedge fund trader Steven Cohen and his firm SAC Capital – a firm that was once described as a “magnet for market cheaters” – in an insider trader case brought by the SEC. Cohen is a well-connected figure on Wall Street, major art collector, and minority owner of the New York Mets. SAC pled guilty to fraud and paid $1.8 billion in fines. While Cohen managed to evade criminal charges with the help of Paul Weiss, other high ranking SAC traders were convicted, including portfolio manager Mathew Martoma, who was sentenced to nine years in jail. As part of the settlement, Cohen was barred from managing outside money for two years. He’s since restructured SAC into Point72 Asset Management LP. </div><div>
</div><div>Protecting the NFL against its concussed players. Paul Weiss represented the National Football League in lawsuits brought against it by over 4,800 former players when it was revealed that the league systematically concealed and downplayed the extent of the dangers they faced from concussions they suffered as football players. In her defense of the NFL, Paul Weiss attorney Beth Wilkinson said, “Let’s be clear. Let’s be clear. We strong— we strongly deny those allegations that we withheld any information or misled the players.” Ultimately the NFL ended up settling with players for $1 billion, half of what players were seeking, leading many to appeal.</div><div>Big bank subprime lenders. A team of Paul Weiss lawyers helped Citigroup, a bank widely seen as a major actor in the housing foreclosure crisis, evade a lawsuit brought by investors who purchased collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were backed by subprime mortgages. The investors filing the lawsuit said that Citigroup misrepresented the CDOs, but Paul Weiss managed to cast doubt on whether Citigroup knew about the volatile structure of the CDOs they sold. Ultimately, however, Citigroup was forced to pay a fine of $7 billion for knowingly selling financial instruments tied to faulty mortgages. </div><div>
</div><div>Private equity raider who associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Paul Weiss lawyers have advised Apollo Global Management, the world’s 9th biggest private equity firm, on mergers and acquisitions with various companies, including ADT Corporation and Shutterfly. As is common with private equity firms, Apollo has been instrumental in bankrupting several of its takeovers, including Noranda Aluminum, Caesars, and Claire’s, which resulted in hundreds of job losses. Apollo was also a major bondholder of Puerto Rico’s debt. Apollo’s founder Leon Black has come under scrutiny in recent months because of his close business relationship to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. While Black has tried to play down his ties to Epstein, Black admitted that Epstein advised him on various tax and philanthropic strategies and advised other Apollo partners under Black’s direction. Epstein served as a director of Black’s family foundation for years after he was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida, though Black claims this was due to a “paperwork error.”</div><div>The list could go on. </div><div>
</div><div>Paul Weiss does not have to defend rogue corporate actors – it chooses to do so. Law firms have taken moral stands in the past against toxic clients. For example, in 1985, Covington & Burling, the largest law firm in Washington, D.C., dropped South African Airways after the firm faced boycotts from law students from Harvard, Yale, NYU, and other schools, who opposed the firm’s complicity with South African apartheid. More recently, attorneys at Davis Polk were allowed to decline representing Big Tobacco clients if they had moral or ethical objections.</div><div>
</div><div>Law students have options that don’t involve representing climate crisis profiteers. As the nation’s top legal talent graduate into a world of intensifying climate emergency, the pressure is mounting on firms like Paul Weiss to make a break with Big Oil.    Related:</div><div>
</div><div>Lawyers Defending ExxonMobil Are Big Biden Donors</div><div>ExxonMobil Is Still Bankrolling Climate Science Deniers</div><div>Joe Biden’s Campaign Co-Chair is a Big Oil and Gas Booster</div><div style="">
</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div>==
<div><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/exxon-climate-lawsuit-democratic-donor/">https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/exxon-climate-lawsuit-democratic-donor/</a></div><div>
</div><div>The LAWYER WHO defended Exxon Mobil against a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general accusing the oil giant of misleading investors on climate change is a prominent Democratic donor who <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=theodore+wells" style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">has given</a> more than half a million dollars to Democrats over the last 30 years. <div data-reactid="212" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Ted Wells Jr., a partner and co-chair of the litigation department at the New York firm Paul, Weiss, was Exxon’s lead attorney in the case <a href="http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2019/20191210_docket-4520442018_decision.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">that concluded</a> on Tuesday, when a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that the attorney general failed to show that the oil company broke the law. The high-profile Exxon lawsuit is one of more than a dozen cases brought by state and local governments against fossil fuel companies, with plaintiffs seeking to hold corporations financially liable for their role in perpetuating the climate crisis — and just the second of these cases to go to trial. Over the last few months, students at Harvard Law School have been mobilizing around Wells’s involvement in the Exxon lawsuit, as he is one of the 13 members of the Harvard Corporation, which consults with the university president to decide whether to pursue fossil fuel divestment. A university spokesperson<a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/9/20/corporation-fossil-fuels/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> told the Harvard Crimson</a> that Wells recused himself from discussions or votes on divestment once he began representing the oil company. Wells did not return requests for comment. “By sitting on this board, Ted Wells can provide cover, and does provide cover, for the fossil fuel industry,” said Isa Flores-Jones, a recent Harvard graduate who is now active with the Sunrise Movement.</div><div id="third-party--article-mid" class="NewsletterEmbed-container" data-reactid="213" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px -20px 20px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; width: auto; display: flex; justify-content: center;"><div class="Newsletter-shortcode Newsletter-shortcode-layout-full" data-reactid="214" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: fit-content; display: flex; margin-right: 0px;">      Attorneys like Wells and their law firms that represent fossil fuel interests while also contributing to Democrats and other liberal causes have been drawing increasing scrutiny from environmental activists who are calling on the Democratic Party to distance itself from the fossil fuel industry, either by swearing off donations from executives and lobbyists or by divesting from these companies.</div></div><div data-reactid="223" style="box-sizing: border-box;">The No Fossil Fuel Money<a href="http://nofossilfuelmoney.org/pledge-signers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> Pledge</a>, which launched in July 2017, is a cornerstone of that strategy. By taking the pledge, a politician and their campaign promises to not knowingly accept any contribution over $200 from the political action committees, lobbyists, or Securities and Exchange Commission-named executives of fossil fuel companies. “We are targeting the very top people at a company, the top donors,” said Collin Rees, a senior campaigner at the climate advocacy group Oil Change International. “We firmly believe that the symbolic act of taking the pledge and publicly saying no is one of the real pieces we need. It changes your policy view and starts to change the political calculus to make [fossil fuels] less socially acceptable.” Lawyers who represent fossil fuel companies are not currently included in the pledge.Beyond Wells, students have been thinking about how to pressure liberal firms that entangle themselves in the climate crisis. “We’re putting a plan together to organize around when these firms come to campus to recruit early next year,” said Aaron Regunberg, a Harvard law school student.Kurt Walters, another Harvard law school student involved with these organizing efforts, said it was a surprise for him when he arrived on campus to see how taboo it was to criticize people for who they take on as legal clients.“It’s been pretty shocking to me the way it’s all been so dominated by respectability politics, where criticizing people for doing bad things is seen as inappropriate,” he said. “Part of it is people who want to believe that going to a firm where you can make $190,000 in a year can still be somehow acceptable.”ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS’ PUSH to get politicians to refuse money from the fossil fuel industry is rooted in recent<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/legislative-staff-and-representation-in-congress/D7735FCF39B843B9F3269FD39362FD66" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> political science research</a> that found that the more congressional staff met with oil and gas groups, the more likely they were to underestimate public support for climate action. And the more financial contributions politicians received from the fossil fuel lobby, the less those politicians believed that the public really wanted to see bold change.In the 2020 campaign, all Democratic presidential candidates have<a href="http://nofossilfuelmoney.org/presidential-signers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> signed on</a> to the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge with the exception of the recent entrants, Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg.Despite this traction, the Democratic National Committee has continued to resist pressure from activists over banning corporate donations from oil and gas. In June 2018, the national party committee<a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/391933-dnc-to-reject-fossil-fuel-company-donations" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> passed a resolution</a> pledging to reject campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, yet two months later, it<a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/08/13/dnc-fossil-fuel-donations-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> effectively reversed course</a>, passing a new resolution inviting contributions from not just fossil fuel workers, but also “their unions’ or employers’ political action committees.” While the second resolution was cast as a labor-friendly measure, activists noted that energy workers and their unions had been free to donate to Democrats under the first proposal.Beyond organizing resistance to fossil fuel industry leaders, activists have begun paying closer attention to individuals and institutions with ties to the fossil fuel industry, even if they don’t work directly within the industry itself. These advocates have been urging leaders to be similarly suspicious of how corporate and financial connections to fossil fuels may distort or influence political decision-making.</div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-top: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); padding: 20px 0px 10px; margin: 7px 40px 20px 0px; float: left; width: 400px;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-thumbnail" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; z-index: 1;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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</a></div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h6 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-eyebrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: " kern="kern" padding-bottom="padding-bottom" px="px">Related</h6><h4 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: " kern="kern">Exxon Mobil Is Funding Centrist Democratic Think Tank, Disclosures Reveal</h4></div></div><div data-reactid="225" style="box-sizing: border-box;">For example, in September on the campaign trail, a 24-year-old activist with the Sunrise Movement<a href="https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1176233940190994433?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1176233940190994433&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecut.com%2F2019%2F09%2Fjoe-biden-sarcasm-dismisses-women-critics.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> asked</a> Joe Biden in Iowa about his climate adviser, Heather Zichal, who earned $1 million from serving on the board of liquified natural gas company, Cheniere Energy. (Biden patted the Sunrise activist’s hand, ignored her question, and said, “Thank you for being … for admiring me so much.”) And then there are the attorneys like Wells, who donated $100,000 to Priorities USA Action, the top Democratic Super PAC in 2012, and has given more than $135,000 to the DNC over the last three decades. His law firm, Paul, Weiss, similarly<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000000769&cycle=2018" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> donated $1.9 million</a> to Democratic candidates in the 2018 cycle and has already donated<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000000769&cycle=2020" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> over $740,000 this cycle</a>. During a nearly three-week civil trial in November, Wells defended Exxon against New York’s claims that the company had misled shareholders by hiding pertinent information about how it was managing the risk of climate change and environmental regulations. In the 55-page opinion issued Thursday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager accepted Wells and co-counsel’s arguments that Exxon had sufficiently developed a method for dealing with future climate change costs and that its statements to shareholders about those future costs were not deceptive. The judge called the attorney general’s securities fraud complaint against Exxon “hyperbolic” and said that while nothing in his judgment is meant to absolve Exxon of responsibility for contributing to climate change, the AG failed to prove that the oil company “made any material representations [to shareholders] that would have been viewed by a reasonable investor as having significantly altered the ‘total mix’ of information available.” THE LEAD ATTORNEY for Chevron in another spate of recent climate liability lawsuits, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., is also a prominent Democratic donor. A partner in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Boutrous also regularly represents media organizations and reporters in First Amendment cases and has recently been representing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients on a pro bono legal team.In an interview with The Intercept, Boutrous defended his Chevron representation. “It’s very easy for me to fight these lawsuits tooth and nail because I think they’re counterproductive and just make no sense from a policy standpoint and legal perspective,” he said, adding that it’s not “a proper use of lawsuits to bring cases that are completely baseless as a platform to debate public issues; that’s not really what we should be using the courts for.”Boutrous has given<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=asc&page=2&q=%09BOUTROUS%2C+THEODORE&sort=D&type=donors" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> tens of thousands of dollars</a> to Democratic candidates and causes, but argued that political contributions have exaggerated influence on policymaking. Echoing a position shared by many prominent Democratic leaders, he said that taking a hard line against fossil fuel companies could interfere with making progress on tackling the climate crisis. “The fallacy at the root of the lawsuit is that somehow punishing and singling out oil and gas companies is needed, when we need to cope with the fact that we still need this energy. And while we can look for alternative sources of energy [and] technological solutions, one of the best sources for this would be these very companies,” he said, adding that Chevron both “accepts” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings and supports U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. Advocates of partnering with energy companies point to the rapid growth of wind and solar, which has proliferated largely because it’s<a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38053" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> become profitable</a> enough to do so.Boutrous, who also <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-dec-18-fi-global18-story.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">successfully represented auto companies</a> when California sued auto manufacturers to demand that they pay for the environmental damage caused by the emissions of their vehicles, argued at length that corporations could be held to account for being socially responsible without, as he put it, being demonized by the Democratic Party. He emphasized his commitment to tackling climate change, but raised particular criticism with Sen. Bernie Sanders, who in September said he’d consider criminally prosecuting fossil fuel executives. Boutrous called Sanders’s position “so wrongheaded.”Despite evidence to the contrary, Boutrous also insisted that the fear of money’s corrupting influence on politics is exaggerated. “I think it’s really overrated the influence that corporations and money have over politicians,” he said. “If you look at all the people who have the right to vote and don’t vote, and sometimes the votes are suppressed, but if you look at all those people, that is an enormous political force. So before we say it’s just money in politics that’s causing the problem, we all need to take responsibility for making sure our voices are heard. The people of the United States need to take responsibility for our country, our climate, and we need to stop blaming everything on too much money.”</div><div class="img-wrap align-right width-fixed" data-reactid="226" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.5em -170px 1em 1.5em; line-height: 1; max-width: 50%; width: 791px; float: right;"><div data-reactid="227" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/12/Ted-Wells_Divest2update-1576190553.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=791&h=1024" alt="Ted-Wells_Divest2update-1576190553" class="alignright size-large wp-image-282181" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: block; margin-bottom: 10px; min-width: 0px !important; min-height: 0px !important; width: 340px;" />Posters made by Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard which targeted Harvard Corporation board members with ties to the fossil fuel industry were hung around Harvard’s campus and distributed on social media.

Image: Courtesy of Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard organizer Joseph Winters</div></div><div data-reactid="228" style="box-sizing: border-box;">THE DEBATE OVER how fossil fuel money influences climate policy has been playing out on college campuses like Harvard, where students have been mobilizing since 2012 to get their university to divest from companies that support fossil fuels. Increasingly, students there have been drawing attention to the fact that four members on the Harvard Corporation have ties to the fossil fuel industry. Their goal is to get the entire corporation to commit to divestment by Earth Day 2020.Ilana Cohen, a Harvard undergraduate and leader with her campus’s divestment movement, said her group launched a semesterlong effort at the beginning of the school year to teach students about the ties of these board members. They’ve been publishing information on their <a href="http://www.divestharvard.com/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">website</a>, launching social media campaigns, and hanging up posters around campus. “We’ve worked really concretely to amplify the absurdity of having the attorney for Exxon on that board,” she said. Flores-Jones, the recent Harvard graduate, compared it to how fossil fuel companies fund various types of university research and donate large sums of money for new fancy campus buildings, sometimes even named after them.In 2007, Harvard’s Dean of the Kennedy School of Government announced the acceptance of a<a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/11/shell-makes-5-year-gift-to-fund-harvard-energy-policy-research/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> five-year, $3.75 million donation</a> from Shell to “enhance and expand University research efforts on critical issues of energy policy.” This year MIT announced that it would be renaming a building where students study climate science<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/11/24/mit-new-name-draws-fire/cFHhUxG17vccSBfuJHiE3K/story.html?event=event25" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;"> the “Shell Auditorium,”</a> after the oil company donated $3 million.“Like politicians who are cast as ‘pragmatic’ for saying we need a carbon-neutral transition by 2050, Harvard is similarly being played for a fool by these companies,” Flores-Jones said. “It’s these swinging doors of having the credibility to be able to sit on the Harvard Corporation, and be associated with Harvard, while then defending the reputations of these companies.”Walters, the law school student, said his goal is to continue in his field what began during the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court last year.“Some people in the legal industry were playing by the old rules, even Democrats and people who believe sexual assault is bad,” he said. “You had them saying, ‘But this Kavanaugh guy, he’s so smart, let’s just approve him.’ Meanwhile, there were huge walkouts with hundreds of students. And so what we’re trying to do is continue to blow up that norm that says it’s more important to be friendly, than to call out people who do bad things.” </div><div>Attorneys for ExxonMobil have revealed a plan to ratchet up pressure on state attorneys general who have vowed to hold Exxon and fossil fuel companies accountable for their conduct on climate change.Exxon attorney Theodore Wells told a New York judge that the company is working on deposing at least 17 attorneys general and their staffs who earlier this year joined with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman under the banner of <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30032016/climate-change-fraud-investigation-exxon-eric-shneiderman-18-attorneys-general" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">AGs United for Clean Power</a>.  By pulling those attorneys general into the fight, Exxon could trigger years of legal wrangling over disclosure of its understanding of climate risks.That plan came to light during a hearing in Exxon's battle with Schneiderman over his office's investigation into whether the company violated consumer fraud laws in connection with climate change-related disclosures.Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is locked in a court battle with Exxon in Texas over her investigation of the company, said Exxon's legal strategy is "calculated to initiate no-holds-barred discovery" against the attorneys general, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3215561-Healeys-No-Holds-Motiont-Nov-2016.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">according to a motion</a> her office filed in the Texas case.Neither an Exxon spokesman nor company lawyers returned calls for comment.This recent round of saber rattling is the latest in a year of escalation since the <a href="about:blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">New York attorney general's office hit Exxon with a subpoena</a> for records spanning four decades of Exxon's research findings and communications about climate change. The subpoena came in the wake of reporting, including <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">an InsideClimate News investigative series</a>, that the company was warned by its own researchers in the late 1970s about the possible catastrophic consequences of climate change and then led efforts to block solutions.Schneiderman was first to open an investigation under the state's consumer protection laws. Massachusetts' Healey and Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, followed, although Walker has since suspended his investigation.The three are <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30032016/climate-change-fraud-investigation-exxon-eric-shneiderman-18-attorneys-general" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">part of a coalition</a> announced  by Schneiderman during a news conference in  March. Members of the coalition—known as the Green 17—also include the attorneys general from California, Maryland, Vermont, Oregon and nine other states and the District of Columbia.<div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Although until recently Exxon had been cooperating with New York investigators, turning over 1.2 million pages of records, it now seeks to block the investigation through the same Texas court where it <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16062016/exxon-sues-massachusetts-attorney-general-climate-change-fraud-investigation" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">is battling Massachusetts</a>.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Now Exxon is using a discovery order issued by the judge overseeing the Texas case as a weapon in a possible wide-ranging attack on its opponents.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">In a ruling last month, Judge Ed Kinkeade said Healey may have acted in "bad faith" when she issued a criminal investigation demand, an order  similar to a subpoena, to the oil company for 30 years of documents.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">To allow Exxon the opportunity to explore whether Healy was prejudiced against the company, Kinkeade granted the company's request for the discovery order. </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">That appeared to set the stage for an extensive review of Healey's internal records associated with her investigation.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">But Wells, the Exxon lawyer, told a New York judge last month that the company was interpreting Kinkade's order more broadly.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">"Right now we have the right, as we read the order, to take the deposition of both the Mass. AG, people and really everybody, as we read it, that was at that March 29th conference," Wells said, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3214367-Document-16-Hearing-Transcript.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">according to a transcript of the hearing</a>.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">"We are going to try to take depositions of the state AGs."</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Wells was speaking during a hearing to contest a subpoena Schneiderman's office issued to the company's auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), for records related PWC's review of Exxon's books.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Exxon wanted to prohibit disclosure of the documents based on auditor-client privilege, but the New York judge ordered PWC to comply with the subpoena. The decision has been appealed by Exxon and PWC.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">So far Exxon has only targeted the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general and their staffs, but Healey predicts other state attorneys general will "vigorously object" if Exxon uses the Texas ruling to go on a wider fishing expedition.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">If the court endorses Exxon's effort, Healey said in her latest motion in Texas court, it will likely achieve "Exxon's goal of putting off as long as possible any investigation into the critically important question of whether Exxon broke the law and deceived consumers and investors about the role of its products in causing climate change."</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">The company has also instructed non-governmental groups, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, to keep communications related to climate change they have had with the attorneys generals coalition, other environmental groups, former Vice President Al Gore and the media.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> </div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;">"We believe that you may have documents that are relevant to pending and potential litigation involving the investigations of ExxonMobil, including but not limited to materials concerning the events and communications leading up to the investigations," <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3215192-Exxon-Letter-to-NGOs-to-Preserve-Communications.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">according to the letter to</a> the Union of Concerned Scientists.</div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/exxon-climate-change-investigation-research-scandal-state-attorneys-general">
</a></div><div dir="ltr" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/exxon-climate-change-investigation-research-scandal-state-attorneys-general">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09112016/exxon-climate-change-investigation-research-scandal-state-attorneys-general</a></div>vs green 1713 AG:
==
http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/05/11/ted-wells-exxon-big-tobacco-nfl-concussions

<a target="blank" href="http://littlesis.org/person/106621/Theodore_Wells_Jr">Ted Wells</a>, an attorney <a target="_blank" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-exxon-probe-climatechange-idUSKBN0TK5RR20151201">hired by ExxonMobil</a>

to represent the company against accusations it lied about the climate

risks of burning fossil fuels, also represented the tobacco industry in

the lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, DeSmog has found. Wells also defended the National Football League (NFL) in the infamous “Deflategate” matter as well as in litigation over the far more serious issue of concussions.

Wells has represented ExxonMobil since at least December 2015, following

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's announcement that his

office would probe <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial">Exxon's role in funding climate change denial</a> despite its long-held understanding and pioneering research into climate change.

Wells' <a target="blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2801448-Response.html">name also appears on an April 13 legal filing</a> Exxon submitted in response to a subpoena issued by the Virgin Islands' AG Office, a sign the “<a target="blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Private-Empire-ExxonMobil-American-Power/dp/0143123548">private empire</a>” has retained him for the wider probe being carried out by a group pf Attorneys General.

Wells has made a career out of

working on behalf of clients with legal claims often flying in the face

of well-established science, with legal industry trade publication Inside Counsel referring to him as a top attorney-for-hire for crisis situations in an April 2007 article.

A DeSmog investigation has also

found parallels in legal and public relations defense tactics deployed

by Wells on behalf of those past clients and the tactics currently being

utilized for his current big-ticket client, ExxonMobil.

Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian of science who has long studied the denial industry and wrote the indispensable book “<a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942" style="line-height: 1.1em;">Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming</a>,” sees Exxon's hire of Wells as a positive and as a potential sign the company sees the writing on the wall.

“Call me an

optimist, but I think this is good news,” she told DeSmog. “The tobacco

industry was successfully prosecuted, and, perhaps with that history in

mind, the NFL has recently agreed to a major

settlement with its players. So perhaps Mr. Wells will guide Exxon

towards a sensible path towards the future, rather than a misguided

retreat into the past.”

Dan Zegart, a senior fellow at the Climate Investigations Center and author of the book “<a target="blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Warriors-Legal-Tobacco-Industry/dp/0385319363" style="line-height: 17.6px;">Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco </a><a target="blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Civil-Warriors-Legal-Tobacco-Industry/dp/0385319363" style="line-height: 17.6px;">Industry</a>,” told DeSmog: “Bringing

in Ted Wells is a sign that ExxonMobil isn't thinking settlement —

they're going to fight these attorney general actions tooth and nail. This is a guy who will throw up every possible defense for Exxon, like he did for tobacco. Every move in this playbook has been pressure-tested over decades.”

<h3>

Exxon Representation</h3>

This is far from the first prominent lawsuit for which Wells has offered his billable services to Exxon, a company which <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/exxonmobil-funding-climate-science-denial">funded climate denial to the tune of $31 million</a>, by conservative estimates, between 1998 and 2014.

In the early 2000's, Wells counseled ExxonMobil in a federal corruption

case, with an ex-Mobil official named J. Bryan Williams pleading guilty

to tax evasion and conspiracy as part of corruption that was at the time endemic in Kazakhstan.

Wells proclaimed Exxon's innocence

in the case outside of the courthouse after Williams' guilty plea,

distancing himself from Williams by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/business/former-mobil-oil-executive-pleads-guilty-to-tax-evasion.html" style="line-height: 1.1em;">stating that</a> “Exxon Mobil had no knowledge of the over $7 million in secret payments that he received and hid in secret bank accounts.”

Wells, too, <a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/John%20Doe%20v.%20XOM%20Petition%20for%20Rehearing.pdf">provided legal representation</a> to Exxon in the lawsuit <a target="blank" href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/10/did-exxon-pay-torturers">filed against it by citizens of Indonesia</a> who alleged they had been tortured by private security guards on the company payroll.

That case, which reached the U.S. Court of Appeals, became somewhat moot when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum case that the Alien Tort Statute does not offer non-U.S. citizen victims of human rights abuses committed abroad by U.S.-based corporations a path to legal justice in U.S. courts.

More recently, Wells represented Exxon in New Jersey in a lawsuit filed

against the company by the State of New Jersey in 2004, which alleged

the corporation's responsibility for rampant statewide pollution. This

culminated in an August 2015 <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/07/exxon_settlement_was_best_deal_state_could_have_go.html">$225 million settlement</a>, far less than the $8.9 billion asked for by the plaintiffs.

<h3>

NFL Science Denial</h3>

Yet for most of the U.S. population, Wells

is best known for the “tough guy” role he has played in the

“DeflateGate” case on behalf of the National Football League (NFL). It turns out that story, like Exxon and like the tobacco wars, has an anti-science spin too.

In that case, famed New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady faces a <a target="blank" href="http://espn.go.com/nfl/story//id/15353950/tom-brady-new-england-patriots-four-game-suspension-deflategate-reinstated-appeals-court">four-game NFL suspension</a>

for allegedly deflating footballs in a 2015 playoff game against the

Indianapolis Colts in order to gain a competitive edge. Wells has <a target="blank" href="http://www.si.com/nfl/2015/05/07/ted-wells-report-new-england-patriots-deflategate">provided the NFL with legal representation</a> for the <a target="blank" href="http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/tom-brady-new-england-patriots-deflategate-suspension-appeal-042916">ongoing saga</a>.

But contrary to the NFL's crackdown on

cheating narrative, the science points to the fact that Brady and the

Patriots actually may not have cheated. It all centers around what is

known as  the “<a target="_blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2073728-ted-wells-report-deflategate.html">Wells Report</a>” — an investigation by Ted Wells of the allegedly deflated footballs.

That report's findings have come under question by <a target="blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/sports/football/nfl-ignores-ball-deflation-science-at-new-england-patriots-expense.html?r=0">numerous</a> <a target="blank" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/1-year-after-deflate-gate-ballooned--science-shows-shame-of-it-all-073316233.html">scientists</a>, the <a target="blank" href="http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/5/22/8646693/demaurice-smith-ted-wells-tom-brady-patriots-deflategate-nflpa">NFL Players Association (NFLPA)</a> and even the conservative think tank <a target="_blank" href="https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/On-the-Wells-report.pdf">American Enterprise Institute</a>.

The most ardent criticism of the study centers around the scientific

report outsourced to a firm called Exponent Inc. that the Wells Report

relies upon to make its case. The tobacco industry also used Exponent

Inc. research to <a target="_blank" href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/05/06/deflategate-nfl-hired-same-research-firm-that-denied-secondhand-smoke-causes-cancer/">claim secondhand smoke does not cause cancer</a>.

“The first thing you know is that when Exponent is brought in to help a

company, that company is in big trouble,” Cindy Gage, owner of an

environmental and agricultural consulting firm in California, <a target="_blank" href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/18/business/la-fi-toyota-exponent18-2010feb18">told the Los Angeles Times in 2010</a>.

While Wells represented the NFL for “DeflateGate,” he also <a target="blank" href="http://nflconcussionlitigation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/download-123.pdf">provided his legal services</a> for the much more scandalous — from a human health and public interest perspective — <a target="blank" href="http://nflconcussionlitigation.com/">concussion lawsuit the NFL faced</a>, brought against it by <a target="blank" href="http://nflconcussionlitigation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Concussion-MDL-Plaintiff-List-5-211.xlsx">over 4,800 former players</a>. That lawsuit ended with a <a target="blank" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/appeals-court-upholds-nfl-1-billion-concussion-settlement-article-1.2605499">$1 billion settlement</a>, which <a target="blank" href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/ex-players-appeals-court-review-nfl-concussion-settlement-article-1.2617880">some players have appealed</a>, and some have pointed to as being rife with loopholes allowing the NFL to <a target="blank" href="https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/the-nfl-concussion-settlement-is-pure-evil">get out of trouble on-the-cheap</a>.

A recent <a target="blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/sports/football/nfl-concussion-research-tobacco.html?r=0">New York Times investigation</a> pointed to myriad links between the tobacco industry and the NFL,

including overlap in lobbyists and legal representation, though Wells'

name goes unmentioned in the article. Wells' law firm, though, <a target="_blank" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/ted-wells--law-firm-demands-ny-times-retraction-on-behalf-of-nfl-162446132.html">responded</a> to the article in a letter published by Politico.

“Tossing around unsubstantiated allegations of links between an

industry and Big Tobacco is reckless and dangerous. Like all broad-brush

attacks, it undermines reasoned, fact-based debate,” <a target="_blank" href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/sites/default/files/NFL-NYT-letter.pdf">reads the March 28 letter</a>.

“In short, there is nothing in the Times's story that can fairly,

credibly and objectively support the false and defamatory charge that

the NFL had ties to the tobacco industry.”

<h3>

Wells and Big Tobacco</h3>

Just over a decade ago, Wells went to bat for Philip Morris in the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/litigation/uspm">United States v. Philip Morris lawsuit</a> filed against the company by the DOJ

in a case ending with a prosecution, but with actual penalties

tantamount to kid glove treatment. The treatment, which came from DOJ political appointees, motivated lead DOJ prosecutor for the case Sharon Eubanks to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lead-govt-tobacco-lawyer-quits/">resign from her post</a>.

In court documents reviewed by DeSmog, Wells' tobacco arguments parallel,

in many ways, those Wells made for Exxon in its April 13 response to

the Virgin Islands' subpoena. Much of that line of argumentation over a

decade ago in the tobacco case centered around proving or disproving

that Philip Morris would likely commit fraud in the future if left

unprosecuted, a key tenet of a successful RICO prosecution.

Throughout the tobacco RICO case, in legal

filings and in the courtroom, Wells emphasized how Philip Morris'

behavior had changed and how it had become more a socially responsible

corporate entity. In the main, Wells said Philip Morris had done so by

withdrawing from the industry-manufactured debate on smoking as it

relates to health and addiction, as well as by deferring to the judgment

of the public health community on smoking's human health impacts.

As a document obtained from University of California-San Francisco's (UCSF) Legacy Tobacco Documents Library details, Wells cross-examined Philip Morris' “<a target="blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2820682-Ted-Wells-Phillip-Morris-Website-Point-Person.html#document/p194/a292200">point person</a>“ — General Counsel <a target="blank" href="http://www.altria.com/About-Altria/Our-Management-Team/Corporate-Management-Team/Pages/Denise-F.-Keane.aspx">Denise Keane</a> — about its

public relations website. That site attempted to convey that the

company no longer participated in the scientific denial of tobacco's

human health impacts.

“The

company's purpose was, number one, to make in a very public way its

commitment to no longer being part of what I would call an old world,

but to take a step that would codify really for all purposes going

forward the fact that it was going to be aligned with the public health

community, that it was going to communicate the message of the public

health community,” <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/1%2019%2005%20AM%20Session%20Transcript.pdf" style="line-height: 14.3px;">Keane testified under oath at a January 19, 2005 hearing</a>.

“And when we talk about what's on the website, you know, to me, the

guiding principle is communicating the message of the public health

community.”

But first and foremost, it appears the website existed for Philip Morris's public relations purposes. A <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2794243/pdf/nihms155204.pdf">2008 academic paper</a> published in the journal Public Health Nursing by Ruth Malone and Elizabeth Smith, both professors at UCSF, concluded the website's existence did not signify any sort of radical shift in company culture on public health.

That paper cites a <a target="blank" href="https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=skyg0088">June 1999 memorandum</a> published in the UCSF tobacco archives, which describes the rationale behind the website. 

<a target="blank" href="http://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=skyg0088"><img alt="Ted Wells ExxonMobil" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-05-02%20at%2011.51.59%20AM.png" style="width: 833px; height: 823px;" /></a> Image Credit: <a target="_blank" href="http://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=skyg0088">University of California-San Francisco</a>

“The objective of this is to increase the awareness of our social

programs and to improve the public perception of our company in the US during these very challenging times resulting from the very negative environment for our tobacco business,” <a target="_blank" href="https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=skyg0088">reads the memo</a>.

“Hence, we want to capitalize on this advertising campaign by inviting

viewers to a Website, where they can learn more about these programs and

Philip Morris in general.”

ExxonMobil currently appears to be positioning itself as having moved away from the “old world,” announcing it would be <a target="_blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/14/exxonmobil-climate-denial-scandal-company-hiring-climate-change-researcher">hiring a new climate change researcher</a> in the midst of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announcing his office had opened an investigation on Exxon.

Keane also declared, under cross-examination by Wells, that her company

had, under the auspices of an October 2, 1997 Statement of Position,

withdrawn from the debate it had manufactured on the human health

impacts of tobacco use. As Wells put it in his opening statement for the

federal trial, this served as proof Philip Morris had entered into a ”<a target="blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2820690-Ted-Wells-New-Era-Philip-Morris.html#document/p2/a292204" style="line-height: 1.1em;">permanent irreversible</a>” dawn of a ”<a target="blank" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2820690-Ted-Wells-New-Era-Philip-Morris.html#document/p2/a292203" style="line-height: 1.1em;">new era</a>.“

<a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Hatch%20Statement_0.pdf"><img alt="Philip Morris Hatch Statement" src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Screen%20Shot%202016-05-01%20at%206.31.06%20PM_0.png" style="width: 833px; height: 901px;" /></a>
 Image Credit: <a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Hatch%20Statement_0.pdf">University of California-San Francisco</a>

A

similar notion of involvement in public policy “debate” before it had

reached an overwhelming scientific consensus arose in Exxon's response

to the Virgin Islands' subpoena signed off on by Wells on April 13, with

the <a target="_blank" href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2801448/Response.pdf" style="line-height: 14.3px;">word “debate” used 11 times</a> by the company's legal team.

<h3>

Free Speech Attack?</h3>

Like with the Philip Morris

precursor, Wells and the Exxon legal team attempted to convey the

company's shift from student of climate change science, to funder of

climate denial and attacks on science, and then the shift back again to

being a responsible corporate citizen concerned about climate change

impacts and policy solutions.

“ExxonMobil has publicly and repeatedly acknowledged risks related to climate change” in recent years, Wells and his legal team wrote in response to the Virgin Islands' AG Office subpoena, citing three example of such acknowledgment in recent years. In so doing, Exxon also claimed the Virgin Islands' AG Office had launched an attack on its free speech rights and its ability to take part in such debates in earlier years.

“The chilling effect of this inquiry, which discriminates based on

viewpoint to target one side of an ongoing policy debate, strikes at

protected speech at the core of the First Amendment,” <a target="_blank" href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2801448/Response.pdf">wrote Wells and the Exxon legal team</a>.

The Virgin Islands rebutted Wells and Exxon in an April 25 response.

“Your argument that this investigation targets protected speech mirrors

arguments that were decisively rejected in the United States’s case

against tobacco, which held tobacco companies financially responsible

for and imposed sweeping injunctive relief to address a decades-long

scheme by those defendants to misrepresent the scientific facts

regarding smoking,” <a target="_blank" href="http://usvidoj.codemeta.com/documents/ltr.%20to%20Gregory%20Hodges%204.25.16.pdf">reads the letter</a>

signed by Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker. “If

ExxonMobil knowingly deceived consumers and investors about climate

change, it, too, is not above the law.”

Numerous conservative groups — some with ties to the climate change denial echo chamber such as Koch-funded groups like <a target="blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-environmental-campaign-that-punishes-free-speech/2016/04/22/e2eafd88-07bc-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>, <a target="blank" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/276081-government-turns-up-the-heat-on-the-first-amendment">Pacific Legal Foundation</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/04/08/outrageous-violation-of-the-first-amendment-state-ags-take-the-next-step-in-going-after-climate-change-skeptics/">Heritage Foundation</a> — have also called the Virgin Islands subpoena a First Amendment attack.

So too did the editorial boards of the <a target="blank" href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-police-escalate-1461968775">Wall Street Journal </a>and the <a target="blank" href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434167/competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attack-exxon-us-all">National Review Magazine</a>. The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.freespeechinscience.org/">Free Speech in Science Project</a>, a group whose funding stream has yet to be revealed, has also pushed a First Amendment argument.

<h3>

“Doubt is Our Product”</h3>

The tobacco industry is now infamous for writing in a <a target="_blank" href="https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=psdw0147">1969 memo</a> that “Doubt

is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body

of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public.” Yet, Exxon has

even said in its own late 1970s studies that “<a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/04/26/there-no-doubt-exxon-knew-co2-pollution-was-global-threat-late-1970s">there is no doubt</a>” that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was harmful. 

Related Reading: <a target="blank" href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/04/26/there-no-doubt-exxon-knew-co2-pollution-was-global-threat-late-1970s">“There is no doubt”: Exxon Knew CO2 Pollution Was A Global Threat By Late 1970s</a>

If doubt is the product, then Wells

has produced a legal career representing and defending doubt — from the

tobacco wars, through to the NFL's concussion crisis and now into today's “<a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/exxonknew?f=tweets&vertical=default">ExxonKnew</a>” saga.

Wells did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this article.
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