FOIA 2

see main FOIA/SLAPP

819 expanded to include punitive intimidation subpoenas ex exxon knew

see tag foia

see HORNER NOT GAO ACAD SUPPRESS

12/16 on dept of energy witch hunt

---

WAPO SAME DAY NO LNX

The oil industry takes its critics to court

The oil and gas industry is ramping up its attacks on climate Superfund laws.

March 27, 2025

Jodi Kelly and her husband, Dan Kelly, use a canoe to remove surgical supplies from a flooded area in Montpelier, Vermont, on July 11, 2023. (Steven Senne/AP)

By Maxine Joselow and Anna Phillips

At the White House last week, the nation’s top oil executives asked President Donald Trump for help fighting state laws that seek billions of dollars from fossil fuel companies.

In Michigan, a group with ties to the fossil fuel industry is suing to obtain the emails of a professor who supports these laws.

And in North Dakota, the oil company that operates the Dakota Access pipeline last week won a $667 million defamation judgment in its lawsuit against an environmental group.

Across the country, fossil fuel firms are ramping up a decades-long fight against policymakers, academics and activists who have sought to make them pay for their role in causing climate change. They are taking particular aim at “climate Superfund laws,” which seek billions of dollars from oil companies to help cover the costs of coping with stronger storms, rising seas and other weather disasters fueled by rising global temperatures.

“I’m seeing a tectonic shift in the way the fossil fuel industry is now going on the offense,” said Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law School.

Follow Trump’s second term

New York and Vermont have each enacted climate Superfund laws modeled after the 1980 federal Superfund law, which requires polluting companies to pay for cleaning up hazardous waste sites. At least seven other Democratic-led states are considering similar bills, according to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

Vermont became the first state to pass a climate Superfund law in June — nearly a year after catastrophic flooding caused millions of dollars in damage to roads, bridges, homes and businesses. Scientists have said global warming increased the likelihood of the extreme rainfall that triggered the flooding, since a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.

Vermont’s measure, which Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed to become law without his signature, charges fossil fuel firms for the greenhouse gas emissions they produced between 1995 and 2024. It doesn’t specify how much money should be paid. Instead, it tasks the state treasurer with calculating the costs of responding to past climate damage and preparing for future climate disasters. The final tally is expected to be comprehensive, factoring in possible expenses such as lower worker productivity amid extreme heat.

In contrast, the climate Superfund law signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) in December would fine the largest greenhouse gas emitters $3 billion annually for the next 25 years. The charges would be based on the companies’ contributions to overall emissions between 2000 and 2018.

Seeking Trump’s support

As Trump sat with the nation’s top oil and gas executives at the White House last week, he asked what was on their minds.

In response, the executives asked for help battling climate Superfund laws, according to two oil industry representatives who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. The Wall Street Journal first reported this request.

Executives also complained about dozens of climate lawsuits brought by state and local governments against oil companies, the two industry representatives said. The lawsuits accuse the companies of deceiving the public for decades about the harms they knew their petroleum products would cause — an allegation the industry rejects.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, left, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright deliver remarks outside the White House after meeting with oil executives on March 19. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

After listening to the executives’ concerns, Trump told a White House staffer to look for ways the administration could help, the two industry representatives said. The president did not commit to taking any specific actions, they said.

Some industry executives want the Justice Department to sue New York and Vermont over their climate Superfund laws. The American Petroleum Institute (API), the U.S. oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm, has already sued over Vermont’s law, alleging that it encroaches on the federal government’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s biggest business lobby, joined the lawsuit filed in December. The two groups argued that Vermont lacked the authority to impose penalties on greenhouse gas emissions beyond its borders — an authority, they said, that the Clean Air Act reserves for the federal government.

“This partisan legislation illegally and retroactively penalizes U.S. oil and natural gas producers for delivering the energy consumers need, and that should be a concern for our leaders in Washington,” Justin Prendergast, an API spokesman, said in an email. “We are exploring all options to correct this overreach by certain states.”

Representatives for several executives who attended last week’s meeting — including the CEOs of Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Phillips 66 — declined to comment or did not return requests for comment. A White House official said the meeting focused on boosting oil production on federal lands in red states.

:Republican-led states are also coming to the industry’s defense. A coalition of 22 red states, led by West Virginia, sued New York over its climate Superfund law in February, arguing that it would put coal and oil producers out of business.

Critics of climate Superfund laws also argue that they unfairly punish oil companies instead of consumers who use fossil fuels, whether to drive their cars or heat their homes.

“It’s actually not the companies’ production of fossil fuels that created the emissions — it’s the use of the fuels,” said Jeff Holmstead, a partner at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell LLP, which represents energy industry clients. “You can’t have one without the other.”

Proponents of these laws counter that they would raise funds desperately needed for withstanding the worsening effects of warming. They argue this money is already coming out of the pockets of taxpayers, who might not be able to afford it — and who have produced far fewer emissions than fossil fuel firms.

“The idea that the companies who bear responsibility are now scheming with the president in order to avoid being held accountable is sickening,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy group that supported Vermont’s law. “For those whose homes were washed away, whose farms were destroyed, it’s the worst kind of insult to injury.”

Targeting an academic

The industry’s allies have targeted climate Superfund laws, as well as an academic who has advocated for them.

In May, the nonprofit Government Accountability and Oversight sued the University of Michigan in an effort to obtain emails between Rachel Rothschild, an assistant law professor, and a collection of environmental advocacy groups in 2023. The group accused the university, which is subject to state public records requests, of refusing to search for the emails before ultimately denying its request.

While Government Accountability and Oversight does not disclose its funding sources, bankruptcy filings show that it received $300,000 from Murray Energy, a coal company now operating under the name American Consolidated Natural Resources. When the group was incorporated in D.C. in 2018, business filings also listed its CEO as Chris Horner, a lawyer who previously worked for the coal company Alpha Natural Resources.

The group later followed up with a second public records request, this time for correspondence related to a “Climate Superfund Act Memorandum” that Rothschild had written. Zach Larsen, a lawyer for Government Accountability and Oversight, said the group should be able to view such correspondence because Rothschild is a public employee.

“This suit seeks to enforce the Legislature’s promise of transparency by sorting out whether Professor Rothschild’s work on Climate Superfund Acts, about which she regularly speaks, advocates, and publishes scholarship all using her University title … is related to her official duties as a public employee such that the public has a right to know about it,” Larsen said in an email.

Rothschild has testified in support of climate Superfund legislation in several states, including Vermont. In her work, she has examined potential flaws in the oil industry’s legal arguments against these measures. She has raised doubts about the industry’s claim that, under the Constitution, federal law preempts states from passing statutes that seek to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for damage linked to climate change.

“Part of the reason that I think these companies are going to President Trump with their concerns is because the preemption argument right now is fairly weak,” Rothschild said in an interview.

Rothschild declined to comment on the lawsuit, which is pending in state court. Horner and a lawyer for the University of Michigan did not respond to requests for comment.

Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the UCLA School of Law, said the same group had previously targeted her, her colleagues and law school donors with more than a dozen public records requests seeking emails related to climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. After the university released the records, Carlson said a conservative dark-money group used them to attack her nomination to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In the end, with her Senate confirmation in doubt, President Joe Biden named her acting administrator of the agency.

Carlson said the campaign against her had a chilling effect.

“It absolutely gives people pause about what they’re willing to work on,” she said. “It may chill outside groups, like nonprofits, and their willingness to work with academics at public institutions.”

---

NYT

NO LNX

She Inspired Laws to Hold the Fossil Fuel Industry Accountable. Now She’s a Target.

A conservative group is suing for emails of a law professor who helped create legislation to force oil, gas and coal companies to pay for climate damage.

By Coral Davenport

March 27, 2025

Fresh out of law school in 2022, Rachel Rothschild wrote a memo laying out the legal justification for a new strategy to fight climate change: States could force oil and gas companies to pay for the damage caused by extreme floods and wildfires that are made worse by the use of their products.

Ms. Rothschild’s work was foundational. It provided the basis for the nation’s first “climate superfund” laws, which were passed in New York and Vermont last year and could be adopted by as many as six more states as soon as this year. If implemented, they could cost oil companies billions of dollars.

Her work made Ms. Rothschild a target. She is one of a number of lawyers, law professors and judges who have been the focus of a campaign to discredit them led by a conservative group with ties to the fossil fuel industry and the Trump administration.

Shortly after the passage of the Vermont law last June, the group sued the University of Michigan, where Ms. Rothschild now teaches, after the university refused its request for Ms. Rothschild’s emails related to “climate superfunds.” As a public institution, the university is subject to the state’s public records law. The group, called Government Accountability and Oversight, has also sought to have Ms. Rothschild undergo a deposition.

The university, which has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, maintains Ms. Rothschild’s communications are not subject to public records requests because they were written on her private email account. Still, the university told Ms. Rothschild that she must comply with the request for a deposition.

Experts said the actions against Ms. Rothschild seemed designed to discourage her or others from similar work.

“Legal actions and public records requests may be used in a manner that can intimidate or silence scholars, and when that happens, it threatens not only the targeted individuals but also the progress of knowledge and informed debate,” Kyle Logue, the interim dean of the University of Michigan Law School, said in a statement.

The actions regarding Ms. Rothschild appear to be part of a campaign by the fossil fuel industry to quash new legal tools for holding companies accountable for climate pollution. As President Trump moves to end federal efforts to fight climate change, the new state-level “polluter-pays” laws and lawsuits are seen as the next frontier in the battle over global warming.

Image

Protesters unfurl a banner sign outside an office building that shows the Statue of Liberty partially submerged in rising waters. The sign says, "Gov. Hochul: Sign or Sink! Make Polluters Pay!"

Climate activists held a rally outside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office in Manhattan to deliver thousands of petitions asking her to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act last year.Credit...Erik McGregor/Sipa USA, via Reuters Connect

Executives from nearly two dozen oil and gas companies raised their concerns about the climate superfund laws at a meeting last week with President Trump at the White House. They want the Justice Department to file briefs in support of their litigation against the state laws, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting.

The campaign is being waged by a group that has largely been funded by the foundation created by Joseph Craft III, chief executive of the nation’s third largest coal company and an ally of and campaign donor to President Trump.

Ms. Rothschild’s initial memo — now making its way through statehouses — laid out the case for states to use the model of the 1980 Superfund law, which requires polluters to pay to clean abandoned toxic waste sites, and apply it to the climate damage caused by emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal. Lawmakers in California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Connecticut are now considering climate superfund legislation.

In addition, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed by states and municipalities aimed at forcing oil and gas companies to pay for repairs or adaptations linked to damage from climate change. Many of those cases, some of which could end up before the Supreme Court, argue that the companies knew for years about the dangers of climate change linked to their products but concealed that information.

The approach is similar to those of past lawsuits that led to landmark settlements with the tobacco industry and opioid manufacturers.

The fossil fuel industry counters that climate change is a global problem and that individual state laws are an unconstitutional attempt to assert control over the nation’s energy system.

“These extraordinary, unprecedented laws impose massive retroactive penalties going back decades for lawful, out-of-state conduct that was regulated by Congress,” said Daryl Joseffer, executive vice president and chief counsel for the litigation arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has sued both New York and Vermont to overturn the climate superfund laws.

Twenty-two other states, led by their Republican attorneys general, are challenging the New York law in federal court.

Ryan Meyers, senior vice president and general counsel at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group that is also fighting to overturn the climate superfund laws in New York and Vermont, said they were part of “a coordinated campaign against an industry that is vital to everyday life and serves as the engine of America’s economy.”

A key player in the campaign to stop the effort to hold fossil fuel companies financially accountable for damages is Christopher Horner, a lawyer and conservative activist who served on the transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency during Mr. Trump’s first term.

For years, Mr. Horner has used public records laws to unearth emails of climate scientists and disseminate them in ways that aim to undermine their work.

“Chris Horner is the nation’s most prolific user of FOIA and its state equivalents to go after anyone fighting climate change who works for a public entity,” said Michael Gerrard, an expert in climate law at Columbia University.

In 2011, the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science complained that Mr. Horner was making “unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists.”

When President Barack Obama tried to pass a climate law, allies of Mr. Horner worked to spread the emails of climate scientists, gathered by Mr. Horner, to Republicans in Congress.

In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Horner said that had helped kill the bill.

Now, Mr. Horner and his allies are focused on the architects behind the “polluter pays” laws.

Mr. Horner did not respond to several requests for comment.

From 2018 to 2021, Mr. Horner served as a board member for Government Accountability and Oversight, the group that filed suit against Ms. Rothschild. As recently as January, Mr. Horner wrote an article for The Washington Reporter, a conservative media website, in which he said he represented the Government Accountability and Oversight group in federal and state open records matters.

According to public records, a major donor to the group is a nonprofit foundation formed by Mr. Craft, the chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners, the country’s third largest coal company. The Joseph Craft III Foundation contributed $300,000 a year to the Government Accountability and Oversight group from 2020 to 2023, for a total of $1.2 million, according to its public tax filings. That appears to make it a major funder of the group’s activities: During those years, G.A.O.’s total annual revenue averaged $576,172.

Mr. Craft and his wife, Kelly, who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the first Trump administration, have given nearly $3 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns, the Republican Party and a Republican super PAC.

Image

Joseph Craft III, dressed in a dark sports jacket, white shirt, dark pants and sunglasses, walks on a brick sidewalk next to Kelly Craft, who is wearing a white blouse, a black and white polka-dot skirt and pointy shoes.

Joseph Craft III with his wife, Kelly, in Washington in 2018.Credit...Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Craft foundation and Alliance Resource Partners did not respond to requests for comment.

Matthew Hardin, who serves on the board of Government Accountability and Oversight, wrote in a statement, “Like all nonprofits, G.A.O. relies on contributions from donors to fulfill its independent, charitable mission of seeking transparency in public institutions and educating the public.”

The group’s interest in Ms. Rothschild appears focused on her communications with Lee Wasserman, the director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a philanthropy that has supported efforts to sue oil companies over what it calls climate deception.

It was Mr. Wasserman who first wondered if lawmakers could combine the old Superfund law with new penalties for climate polluters.

Mr. Wasserman brought the idea to the Institute for Policy Integrity, a nonprofit research organization that is housed in New York University’s law school, where Ms. Rothschild was then working as a fellow. She researched whether the idea could stand up legally. The Rockefeller Family Fund donated $50,000 to the Institute for Policy Integrity to fund her research, which led New York and Vermont lawmakers to propose legislation.

When it comes to climate and environmental matters, states often rely on academics for legal advice because many private law firms represent fossil fuel companies, which can create a conflict of interest.

After writing her memo, Ms. Rothschild joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where she continued to work on climate superfund legislation in her free time, briefing lawmakers and testifying before legislative committees.

“I’m proud of the fact that I do a lot of pro bono work in areas where I have particular expertise, and I was glad I could help states like Vermont and New York draft these laws,” she said in a statement.

Ms. Rothschild’s pro bono work was “critical” to passage of the law in New York, said Justin Flagg, director of environmental policy for Liz Krueger, a Democratic New York state senator who sponsored the legislation. “This was something that had not yet been tested in court,” he added. “So we really hung our hat on her analysis.”

Environmental law professors at other public universities have been targets of similar campaigns. During the Biden administration, Mr. Horner used the state public records law to obtain the emails of Ann Carlson, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ms. Carlson, who had consulted on climate damage lawsuits, was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to run a federal agency that writes rules aimed at reducing climate-warming tailpipe pollution — a position requiring Senate confirmation.

Government Accountability and Oversight gave Ms. Carlson’s emails to Fox News, which published stories about her on its website including one titled, “Biden nominee coordinated dark money climate nuisance lawsuits involving Leonardo DiCaprio.”

Image

Ann Carlson, who has shoulder-length wavy brown hair and large glasses, looks into the distance.

Professor Ann Carlson at the University of California, Los Angeles.Credit...Joyce Kim for The New York Times

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, used the emails to fight Ms. Carlson’s confirmation, at one point calling her an “ethically challenged, environmental zealot.” He introduced an amendment on the Senate floor to strip the salary from her position.

While the amendment failed, she ultimately withdrew her nomination, although she did end up serving in the role in an acting capacity.

“It was ruthless, relentless and baseless,” Ms. Carlson said of the experience of having her emails used against her. “This is a tactic designed to dissuade people from working on important climate policies.”

The campaign has extended to at least one judge. In 2023, Mark Recktenwald, the chief justice of the Hawaii Supreme Court, wrote a unanimous decision that the local government in Honolulu could move forward with a climate liability lawsuit against major oil companies.

Justice Recktenwald gave a remote presentation to the Environmental Law Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group that runs seminars on environmental litigation.

Conservative media outlets including as The Daily Caller and Fox News ran stories noting that a member of the institute’s board had worked at a law firm that defended the climate law in the Honolulu case. The stories did not mention that oil executives also serve on the institute’s board. Justice Recktenwald had also asked both parties in the Honolulu lawsuit for any concerns about his plans to speak at the seminar, and neither side had objected.

But in virtually every story, a group called Energy Policy Advocates, which has named Mr. Horner as its lawyer, charged that Justice Recktenwald’s participation showed improper bias.

Justice Recktenwald declined to comment. The effort to devalue the legal scholars involved in the climate cases reflects the potential impact of the new laws and litigation, experts said.

“These new state laws and this avalanche of lawsuits are threatening the survival of these fossil fuel companies,” said Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

Coral Davenport covers energy and environment policy, with a focus on climate change, for The Times.

A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2025, Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Her Work Inspired Climate Superfund Laws. Now She’s a Target..

omfg it's his TITLE

Power The Future Works With The Same Public Relations Firm That That Had To Drop A No-Bid Contract With The EPA After Its Ties To A Controversial Group That Harassed EPA Staff

Power The Future’s Website Uses A Web Domain Registered By Defitecn Public Affairs. “In other examples, environmental causes have been attacked by astroturf websites, linked to Definers Public Affairs:{ by common Google analytics codes. The They Cap You Pay website attacked proposed cap and trade (climate change-related) legislation in Oregon. Meanwhile, the Power the Future website – which again shares the same tracking code and was also registered using a Definers email address – claims that ‘We are the voice of energy workers pushing back on radical green groups and the ideologues who fund them.’” Global Witness, :(style="background-color:#faf8f5;"):}:[:{06/11/19:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::{]}:

Definers Public Affairs Had To Drop Its No-Bid EPA Contract After Its Ties To A Republican Group That Sought To Identify EPA Staff Critical Of Donald Trump. “A consulting firm has pulled out of a federal contract to provide media monitoring services to the Environmental Protection Agency after it was disclosed that a lawyer among its top executives had been investigating agency employees critical of the Trump administration. Joe Pounder, the president of Definers Public Affairs, said in a statement on Twitter that his company’s $120,000 contract with the E.P.A., which it was awarded this month, had become a ‘distraction.’ The contract came under scrutiny because of the company’s links toAmerica Rising, a Virginia-based corporation and Republican political operation with several offshoots that have investigated E.P.A. officials. One lawyer on the company’s staff,Allan Blutstein, sent a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to the E.P.A. asking for email correspondence by employees who had been publicly critical of the Trump administration’s management of the agency.[FREEEEEEEDDDDOOOOOMMMMM!]:{[…] But agency employees — particularly those who had been targeted by America Rising after they raised questions about the management of Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. — said they were fearful the new contract might translate into increased surveillance of agency staff.” :(style="background-color:#faf8f5;"):}:*New York Times*:{, :(style="background-color:#faf8f5;"):}:[:{12/19/17:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::{]}:

off bs

Blutstein leads America Rising’s efforts to obtain government records through public records requests. Before joining America Rising, Mr. Blutstein litigated Freedom of Information Act cases at Cause of Action Institute, a conservative public interest law firm. He also served as the principal FOIA advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Financial Stability and as a staff attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy, the government’s lead FOIA policy office. In addition to his work at AR, Mr. Blutstein operates a :{FOIA blog:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: and is a member of the 2020-2022 :{FOIA Advisory Committee:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: at the National Archives.

---

blog

https://www.foiaadvisor.com/

2 22 :{FOIA Advisory Committee:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

Alina M. Semo, Director, Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (Committee Chairperson)

Roger Andoh, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Allan Blutstein, America Rising

David Cuillier, University of Arizona

Allyson Deitrick, U.S. Department of Commerce

Kristin Ellis, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation

Jason Gart, History Associates Incorporated

Alexis Graves, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Loubna W. Haddad, U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency

Kel McClanahan,National Security Counselors

Michael Morisy,MuckRock

Alexandra Perloff-Giles,Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

Tuan N. Samahon, Villanova University

Matthew Schwarz, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

James R. Stocker, Trinity Washington University

Thomas Susman, American Bar Association

Bobak Talebian, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy

A. Jay Wagner, Marquette University

Patricia Weth, National Labor Relations Board

Committee members absent from the meeting:

Linda Frye, Social Security Administration

===

see also DN 3/9/20 fighting threatens peace deal w/ taliban

'afghanistan Papers’ reveal how presidents and generals misled the American public on war’s progress

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now March 9, 2020 foia

Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock has just won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting for his in-depth investigation called “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/afghanistan-papers-reveal-how-presidents-and-generals-misled-the-american-public-on-wars-progress/

the conv 1/20

...

The George Mason case

Transparent GMU, a student advocacy group formed in 2013, had tried for years to access the Koch agreements under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act (VFOIA). The group suspected that, like Florida State University, George Mason might be trading academic influence for Koch dollars.

The group’s VFOIA requests were denied on the basis that the George Mason University Foundation possessed the agreement records and, as a private entity, did not have to share them.

Transparent GMU sued the foundation in 2017. The group argued that because the nonprofit accepts, disburses and administers funds for the sole benefit of a public university, it should be subject to VFOIA requests just like the university.

More than a year later, while the case was still pending, the university released the agreements and acknowledged that allowing donors to influence faculty decisions “falls short of the standard of academic independence we should expect in every gift.”

In the wake of the scandal, in May 2019 the university revised its gift acceptance policy. The university now accepts conditions attached to a private donation in writing, which makes them part of the public record. The Charles Koch Foundation also announced that it will now make public all multi-year agreements with colleges and universities.

But Transparent GMU ultimately lost its court challenge. In a unanimous decision that leaves no path for appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Dec. 12 that as a privately held corporation with its own bylaws, the George Mason University Foundation is not a public body. Therefore, it’s not obligated to disclose records.

State by state...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-ordered-pentagon-to-delay-ukraine-aid-less-than-2-hours-after-zelensky-phone-call-foiad-emails

no lnx

Trump ordered Pentagon to delay Ukraine aid less than 2 hours after Zelensky phone call: FOIA’d emails

Written by News Corpse, Daily Kos December 22, 2019

The fact that Donald Trump has now been impeached (despite what the loons on Fox News say), hasn’t slowed the discovery of new evidence of his guilt. This is one of the reasons that it’s so important to ensure a comprehensive consideration of the Articles of Impeachment when they get transmitted to the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows this, and so do the vast majority of Americans who favor a full and fair hearing, including witnesses and document production.

The impeachment controversy has sparked as epic battle between Pelosi and the Senate’s GOP majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who has already announced that he has no intention of conducting a fair hearing and will be “taking his cues” from White House lawyers. In the meantime, new evidence has already emerged that appears to be profoundly damaging to Trump:

Chuck Schumer

SenSchumer

This email from Michael Duffey—approximately 90 minutes after President Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine—is all the more reason why we need Duffey and others to testify in a Senate trial.

The “sensitive nature”? What is that about?

A screenshot of the email from Michael Duffey]

That’s right. Less than two hours after Trump got off the phone with President Zelensky of Ukraine, he ordered the Defense Department to withhold military aid to a country that was being invaded at the time by Russia. The order included a directive to keep it quiet due to it’s “sensitive nature.”

Trump is fond of telling everyone to “read the transcript” of his phone call with Zelensky. He’s tweeted that demand 29 times in the past few weeks. Most recently, yesterday. He is referring to reading the notes made in a memo that describes his conversation with Zelensky. And he is apparently too oblivious to recognize that the memo actually confirms that he conditioned military aid on Zelensky’s promise to help him smear Joe Biden. What Trump said, in response to Zelensky’s inquiry about the aid, was…

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

That’s a textbook quid pro quo. Trump then talks about getting some information related to a debunked conspiracy theory about a computer server that belonged to the Democratic National Committee. But he quickly segues from that to explicit requests for dirt on Joe Biden:

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with [Rudy Giuliani and] the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great … so if you can look into it.”

This new memo was acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Public Integrity.It is among the documents that the White House had previously refused to surrender to congressional investigators. There are many more that Trump continues to withhold. And he is still refusing to allow his staff to give testimony.

But if there’s one thing this memo proves, it’s that there is a real need to continue probing this criminal president and the accomplices in his administration. And when the Senate takes up the impeachment, they must permit the introduction of new evidence and testimony from relevant witnesses. The truth will likely come out eventually, anyway. But if Republicans in Congress allow Trump to deny access to it at this stage, they will be held accountable by both the courts and the voters.

dereg nation 1119

The Interior Department has backed off a proposal to put limits on public records requests (Freedom of Information Act requests), reports the Mountain West News Bureau. The final version of the new rule does not include two widely-criticized provisions that would have capped the number of records processed every month, and required requests to be much more specific in terms of the documents desired. But another Trump-era rule, one giving political appointees more power to withhold documents from public records releases, remains in place.

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/12/12/ucla-law-professor-ann-carlson-cara-horowitz-cei/

12/18

Marco Poggio

A conservative think tank with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry has sued UCLA to obtain email correspondence between two UCLA climate law professors and pro-environment individuals involved in climate change litigation.

The lawsuit was filed last month in California Superior Court by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian group that lobbies against limits on greenhouse gas emissions and claims that CO2 is good for the environment. CEI argued the university hasn’t complied with two public record requests made in February and May under the California Public Records Act.

According to the lawsuit, *Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Regents of the University of California,*the emails show environmental law professors Cara Horowitz and Ann E. Carlson discussed future meetings with others, including staffers from several attorney general offices, to discuss new legal actions against major carbon producers.

The lawsuit mimics the ones filed to obtain email correspondence by several climate scientists, including prominent climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State, which was ended by the Virginia Supreme Court in 2012. Another continues to embroil University of Arizona scientists Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes, who were recently ordered to release 13 years of emails demanded by another fossil fuel ally.

“This appears to be yet another effort by hired guns funded by polluting interests to badger, intimidate, and silence scientists whose findings prove inconvenient to those who continue to profit from our dependence on fossil fuels,” Mann said of the suit against UCLA.

Among the emails Horowitz and Carlson have been asked to release are those exchanged with litigators in direct contact with offices of pro-environment attorneys general around the country. That includes former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who in 2015 began investigating Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud.

Carlson told Climate Liability News that UCLA is working on complying with CEI’s record request, sorting through hundreds of emails.

“I don’t feel intimidated. I don’t have anything to hide,” Carlson said, “I don’t have a problem, so far, with what I’ve been required to turn over.

“I do worry that these tactics, more broadly, are designed to discourage public discourse about important topics, like climate change and who should pay for climate damages.”

Specifically, CEI has asked for correspondence between the two UCLA scholars and Shaun Goho, a Harvard lecturer and environmental lawyer with a record of environmental litigation in state and federal court.

Goho said the lawsuit is just an harassment tactic meant to divert the energy and resources of people fighting climate change away from their work.

“I don’t see how academics speaking with government officials about matters of public concern is a conspiracy. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me,” Goho said.

“This lawsuit doesn’t stand alone. It’s really part of a broader campaign by fossil fuels companies and their allies to harass people who are taking action trying to try to address climate change in various ways, whether it’s climate scientists, lawyers or others who are researching legal issues related to climate change and the relationship between climate change and the fossil fuel industry.”

CEI has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Exxon was its biggest funder until 2006, when public criticism pushed the company to distance itself from CEI’s climate denial campaigns.

CEI has also sought emails containing the names of other pro-environment lawyers and climate scientists, including Peter Frumhoff, the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Sharon Eubanks, one of the attorneys involved in the federal tobacco litigation against Philip Morris.

Additionally, CEI demanded emails regarding two separate events—one held at Harvard and one at UCLA—attended by Carlson and Horowitz and employees of various state attorney general offices, private lawyers, academics and environmental activists, who were set to discuss causes of action against major carbon producers.

“Public records show that Professors Horowitz and Carlson are using their positions at your public university to coordinate with certain activists groups in organizing and pursuing law enforcement and civil investigations and litigation against private opponents of a particular political agenda. We seek correspondence and other records illuminating this use of a public university faculty position and resources,” the request’s text reads.

Frumhoff declined to comment for this story.

Central to the lawsuit are the UCLA and Harvard meetings, in which Carlson, Horowitz and other parties discussed legal actions against polluters.

The “secret meetings” as they were described in some of the emails, were attended by Frumhoff and Matthew Pawa, a lawyer with Hagens Berman,which is involved in several climate liability suits filed by communities against the fossil fuel industry. Those meetings also included staffers from attorney general offices around the country, including those of New York and California.

A CEI representative declined to comment, citing pending litigation, but referred to the organization’s website for a statement concerning the lawsuit.

“This ‘secret meeting’ agenda shows UCLA faculty briefed the attorneys general and prospective donors on potential legal actions they could pursue. Attorneys general are now pursuing the types of investigations urged by UCLA faculty,” Chris Horner, a senior fellow at CEI who signed the petition, wrote in the statement.

“This donor-funded scheme of using law enforcement to pursue a failed political agenda, raises significant constitutional and other legal issues, as well as ethics concerns. With the revelation that this involves the use of public institutions in this mercenary campaign, the public has a right to know what their employees are doing in their name, and on their dime,” Horner’s statement saidthe statement continues.

In its lawsuit, CEI claimed the subject matter contained in the emails is of “great public interest” and that the university has violated the California Constitution because delays in handing over the records practically meant a refusal to comply with the request.

The lawsuit presents new challenges to law practitioners in the field of environmental litigation, paving the way for an aggressive use of public record access law that some fear would stymie the process of accountability of carbon producers.

“I don’t know exactly where this is all leading. I do think it’s part of a broader campaign to try to divert attention away from oil industry’s own activities and own efforts to try to dissuade the public about the legitimacy and validity of climate science, and I worry about that,” Carlson said.

The use of public record access laws as a tool to hit back critics in the academic world is a fairly recent practice embraced by trade groups of several industries, not just oil and gas, to target opponents.

“Requests can be burdensome on government agencies,” said David Snyder, an expert in California public record access law who directs the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit nonpartisan advocacy group that promotes free speech and public access to government information.

The law effectively puts academics in the same position as public officials that might have strong interests in not having their communications disclosed to the public.

“It seems like an odd fit, I acknowledge, for a college professor to sit in the same category as officials at city hall or at the governor’s office,” Snyder said. “Nonetheless, UCLA is a public agency, and employees of that public agency are subject to the public records act.”

A study compiled by the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit providing legal assistance to researchers, ranked each of the 50 states based on the level of protection from open records laws they grant to scientists working at publicly-funded institutions.

Only three states, Delaware, Maine, and Pennsylvania, exclude some forms of scientific and academic research from their open records laws. Laws in four other states, including Arkansas, Montana, New Mexico and North Carolina, contain no protection for researchers whatsoever. The remaining states guarantee different types of statutory exemption, deliberative process exemption and balancing tests that offer different degrees of protection.

“The breadth and strength of state open records laws and the federal equivalent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have made them powerful tools, but have also made them vulnerable to misuse and abuse by groups who try to harass researchers and stifle scientific research they dislike,” the study reads.

The right to exemption from having to turn over documents is often hard to balance with the right to access public records, which is critical to ensure transparency in institutions, Snyder said.

“It’s tricky,” Snyder said. “Under the public records act, by design, government agencies are not allowed to single out the requesters based on the reasons for which they want the records.”

“They can’t say, ‘we’re not gonna give you the records because we know that you espouse these views, because you want to use the records for this purpose,’ that’s expressly forbidden,” Snyder said. “You don’t want the government picking sides.”

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06082019/exxon-climate-fraud-investigation-witness-pressure-investors-new-york-attorney-general

Prosecutors in New York are accusing ExxonMobil of trying to discourage potential witnesses from testifying about whether the oil giant misled investors over the costs it may face from future climate regulations. They asked a judge to block Exxon from making what they describe as "unreasonable" and extensive requests for documents from the witnesses.

On Thursday, Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York Supreme Court sided with the prosecutors, saying that Exxon "can't go on a gigantic, burdensome fishing expedition to exhume hundreds or thousands of documents that have no relevance to the issues in this case."

Court filings show that Exxon sent letters to a group of investment advisers and shareholder activists who prosecutors want to put on the stand, informing them they will be subject to subpoenas from the company seeking documents relevant to the case if they choose to testify.

Because of their roles investing in and engaging with Exxon over climate change, these witnesses' testimony could prove critical to the state's case.

With opening statements scheduled to begin Oct. 23, a lawyer in New York Attorney General Letitia James's office wrote that the request would "impose disproportionate burdens on these witnesses in a transparent attempt to discourage them from testifying voluntarily, and threatening to upend the trial schedule."

While prosecutors had agreed to allow Exxon to interview the witnesses before the trial, the company went further by sending at least one witness what the attorney general described as an expansive request for documents and communications, including "all documents concerning your oil and gas holdings" and more. Exxon wrote on July 30 that it planned to send documents requests to seven witnesses.

James issued a statement after Ostrager's ruling on Thursday saying, "We appreciate the court's very reasonable decision to deny Exxon's over burdensome fishing expedition, and look forward to making our case in court this fall."

Aaron Caplan, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and expert in legal ethics, said the letter from Exxon included in the court filing was unusually aggressive and tested ethical bounds, though he said Exxon could argue that it is simply being thorough in its defense.

"It tiptoes right up to the line of impropriety," he said. "And whether it crosses that line is up to interpretation."

Prosecutors argued that the requests would set off lengthy negotiations between the parties and onerous demands for document searches on the witnesses and their employers, with less than three months before a scheduled trial.

Exxon did not reply to requests for comment. But a lawyer representing the company wrote in a filing that the request for documents and communications "goes hand-in-hand" with pre-trial interviews of the witnesses, a step prosecutors had agreed to.

Why New York Is Suing

New York prosecutors filed the case against Exxon last year, accusing it of defrauding investors by downplaying the costs it could face as governments try to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

At the heart of the case is the revelation that the company essentially kept two sets of books for how it estimated these costs, one that it shared with the public, and another that it used internally when assessing its investments.

The result, prosecutors allege, was that Exxon led investors to believe that it was being far more conservative about these future costs than it really was, thereby exposing the investors to greater risks.

The company has said the two figures were used for separate, legitimate purposes, and that it never misled anyone.

Exxon's Letters to the Witnesses

The latest tussle in court was prompted by a set of letters that Exxon sent to witnesses in early July, saying that if they decided to testify, Exxon would use a subpoena to seek documents from them.

The letter from Exxon that was included in the court filings says that the witnesses cannot be compelled to testify, but "nonetheless may be willing to testify." It says "please let us know" if you choose not to testify, and adds that if the witness does testify, "ExxonMobil is entitled to discovery concerning her relevant knowledge."

At least one witness, Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing corporate sustainability through shareholder engagement, received the specific document request. It asked for any documents related to the witness's investments in ExxonMobil or other oil and gas companies, as well as documents related to the investment criteria for these holdings.

Exxon also asked for copies of communications with the attorney general's office discussing the case or climate change, and any communications with a list of lawyers, academics, advocacy groups and foundations that have supported climate change lawsuits against the oil and gas industry.

It's unclear how many witnesses have received the specific document request. Other witnesses either declined to answer specific questions about the requests or did not reply to inquiries.

Fugere said she expects to testify if she's called as a witness, though she declined to talk about her potential testimony or Exxon's demands for documents.

Attorney: 'It's Pretty Unorthodox'

Caplan said the wording of Exxon's letter to the witnesses would have been less questionable had Exxon simply issued subpoenas without the suggestion that the matter would disappear if witnesses chose not to testify.

"You can see where it could be interpreted as Exxon using a carrot and stick approach," Caplan said. "If you're not going to be a witness, we don't need anything from you."

Annika Martin, a New York attorney who has squared off with BP over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill but is not associated with the Exxon case, said Exxon's letter appeared to be "aggressive and carefully calculated not to step over the line."

"It's pretty unorthodox to send a letter like that," she said. "I can't pin it on any rule it violates, but it is pretty clear what the intention is."

Published Aug. 6, 2019

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

OIL/TAR SANDS

EXXON CLIMATE

LITIGATION

horner climate lawsuits

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/26/competitive-enterprise-institute-climate-denial-target-nbc-cities-liability-suits

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Climate Denial Efforts Target Media, Cities Filing Liability Suits

By Guest • Saturday, January 26, 2019 - 03:47

Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

The conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute has been busily pressing forward with its mission to promote climate denial, using high-profile tactics like full-page ads in major newspapers. But it is also working behind the scenes, filing records requests to dig for information from cities filing climate liability suits and academics studying the topic.

As the science has grown definitive in tying global warming to the burning of fossil fuels, even oil companies have been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus and back away publicly from climate denial efforts. But CEI continues to double down on their mission to claim the science is not settled.

CEI made a splash this week by purchasing full-page ads in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal taking issue with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and NBC for refusing to give airtime to denialists during his Dec. 30 show about climate change.

The think tank has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and has long worked to promote climate denial. And as municipalities have begun to sue fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, CEI has filed briefs and launched other campaignsdefending them.

According to Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, CEI’s most recent push is likely motivated by the increasing number of those lawsuits and investigations of the fossil fuel industry.

“CEI has a personal interest in how these lawsuits proceed because they had a contract with ExxonMobil Foundation from the 1990s — they got over $2 million through 2007 when Exxon abruptly dropped them,” said Davies, adding that he expects lawyers pressing suits against the company would want to see the contracts between CEI and Exxon during that period.

CEI’s tactics go beyond its attempts to sway public opinion.

Last year, CEIsued UCLA to obtain emails the organization said were exchanged between two UCLA climate law professors and state attorneys general offices involved in investigations of the oil giant.

An ethics complaint filed by another fossil fuel industry-backed group in December against then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood echoes areport written by CEI legal fellow Chris Horner. The report relied on public records requests to allege that attorneys general are involved in a coordinated scheme by private interests to hold oil giants responsible for climate change. That alleged conspiracy includes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is also investigating Exxon for possible fraud.

Horner has also filed information requests with municipalities filing suit against the oil and gas industry, including Richmond and San Francisco. In those requests, he is seeking records related to a climate litigation-related briefing he said took place at Harvard in 2016 between activists, private attorneys and public employees of various states’ attorney general’s offices.

In July, he requested communication belonging to staff members in the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, after it became the first U.S. state to attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change by filing suit against 21 oil and gas companies.Horner’s request was for communication between special assistant attorney general Greg Schult, senior policy advisor Matthew Lenz and legal experts involved in climate litigation in other municipalities, including attorneyMatthew Pawa, Niskanen Center chief counsel David Bookbinderand director of climate policy Joseph Majkut.

Horner is also on the board of directors of the non-profit Government Accountability and Oversight, the organization behind Climate Litigation Watch, which posts public records obtained in an attempt to “expose the network of influence involving the litigation surrounding climate change.”

CEI has used full-page ads in major newspapers in previous campaigns to try to discredit climate action.

In one ad that appeared in The New York Times in 2016, CEI — along with more than 40 signatories — claimed that attorneys general across the country were abusing their power by attempting to silence the “debate” on climate science.

Between 1997 and 2014, those signatories and the organizations they representreceived more than $10 million from Exxon and the ExxonMobil Foundation and theyreceived more than $21 million from the Koch brothers, who have long funded climate denial efforts in support of their fossil fuel businesses.

Today, full-page ads in theWashington Post can cost $100,000 and more. Ads in the Wall Street Journal can top $325,000.

In a press release, CEI said the ads push back on Todd and NBC’s decision to “exclude guests who disagree with alarmists and calls for a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmist policies.”

“Sometimes, journalists like Chuck Todd are persuaded to join the activists in shutting down legitimate debate about policy issues and in those cases, we feel a duty to push back in defense of our rights and our policy positions,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email, adding that the organization’s requests for public records are made on their own initiative, and as part of this body of work defending their principles.

“Americans of all political stripes tune into NBC’s Meet the Press with the expectation that the great political issues of the day will be debated vigorously by guests representing a full range of viewpoints,” said CEI PresidentKent Lassman.

Because CEI does not disclose its donors, it’s unclear who is funding the current ads, but it has previously received funding directly from David Koch, as well as coal giantsMassey Energy Company andMurray Energy Corporation.

ExxonMobil was a publicly-acknowledged contributor to CEI for a number of years.

“In 2006, however, ExxonMobil publicly announced that it would cease its support for CEI and a number of other groups,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email.

NBC did not respond to a request for comment.

The ads fit into a long-running strategy to cloud the issue of climate science to the public.

CEI was named in a 1998 email to the American Petroleum Institute’s global climate science communications team as a possible funding recipient in a campaign to implement a “Climate Action Plan.”

According to that plan, “victory will be achieved” when people and the media are convinced there is significant uncertainty in climate science and “media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognizes the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current ‘conventional wisdom.'”

Davies said in addition to potentially having to face an examination of its relationship with Exxon in the course of climate litigation, CEI has other concerns.

Davies pointed to a study published this week showing Greenland’s ice ismelting faster than previously thought and a recent Yalepoll showing that 73 percent of people in the U.S. understand climate change is occurring and 62 percent understand it is mostly human-caused.

“The evidence is in front of people, the weather‘s messed up, the climate’s messed up, the public opinion is moving away from CEI, and then they strike out at a national news broadcast for not including this extreme minority opinion that there’s nothing to worry about,” Davies said.

ref

https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/12/12/ucla-law-professor-ann-carlson-cara-horowitz-cei/

Marco Poggio

According to the lawsuit, :{Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Regents of the University of California:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:*,*the emails show environmental law professors Cara Horowitz and Ann E. Carlson discussed future meetings with others, including staffers from several attorney general offices, to discuss new legal actions against major carbon producers.

Carlson told Climate Liability News that UCLA is working on complying with CEI’s record request, sorting through hundreds of emails.

“I don’t feel intimidated. I don’t have anything to hide,” Carlson said, “I don’t have a problem, so far, with what I’ve been required to turn over.

“I do worry that these tactics, more broadly, are designed to discourage public discourse about important topics, like climate change and who should pay for climate damages.”

Specifically, CEI has asked for correspondence between the two UCLA scholars andShaun Goho, a Harvard lecturer and environmental lawyer with a record of environmental litigation in state and federal court.

Goho said the lawsuit is just an harassment tactic meant to divert the energy and resources of people fighting climate change away from their work.

“I don’t see how academics speaking with government officials about matters of public concern is a conspiracy. It doesn’t seem to make sense to me,” Goho said.

CEI has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. Exxon was its biggest funder until 2006, when public criticism pushed the company to distance itself from CEI’s climate denial campaigns.

CEI has also sought emails containing the names of other pro-environment lawyers and climate scientists, including Peter Frumhoff, the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists,and Sharon Eubanks, one of the attorneys involved in the federal tobacco litigation against Philip Morris.

Additionally, CEI demanded emails regarding two separate events—one held at Harvard and one at UCLA—attended by Carlson and Horowitz and employees of various state attorney general offices, private lawyers,academics and environmental activists, who were set to discuss causes of action against major carbon producers.

“Public records show that Professors Horowitz and Carlson are using their positions at your public university to coordinate with certain activists groups in organizing andpursuing law enforcement and civil investigations and litigation against private opponents of a particular political agenda.We seek correspondence and other records illuminating this use of a public university faculty position and resources,” the request’s text reads.

Frumhoff declined to comment for this story.

Central to the lawsuit are the UCLA and Harvard meetings, in which Carlson, Horowitz and other parties discussed legal actions against polluters.

The “secret meetings” as they were described in some of the emails, were attended byFrumhoff and Matthew Pawa, a lawyer with Hagens Berman, which is involved in several climate liability suits filed by communities against the fossil fuel industry. Those meetings also included staffers from attorney general offices around the country, including those of New York and California.

A CEI representative declined to comment, citing pending litigation, but referred to the organization’s website for a statement concerning the lawsuit.

“Thisdonor-funded scheme of using law enforcement to pursue a failed political agenda, raises significant constitutional and other legal issues,as well as ethics concerns. With the revelation that this involves the use of public institutions in this mercenary campaign, the public has a right to knowwhat their employees are doingin their name, and on their dime,” Horner’s statement said the statement continues.

In its lawsuit, CEI claimed the subject matter contained in the emails is of “great public interest”and that the university has violated the California Constitution because delays in handing over the records practically meant a refusal to comply with the request.

The use of public record access laws as a tool to hit back critics in the academic world is a fairly recent practice embraced by trade groups of several industries, not just oil and gas, to target opponents.

“Requests can be burdensome on government agencies,” said David Snyder, an expert in California public record access law who directs the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit nonpartisan advocacy group that promotes free speech and public access to government information.

The law effectively puts academics in the same position as public officials that might have strong interests in not having their communications disclosed to the public.

The right to exemption from having to turn over documents is often hard to balance with the right to access public records, which is critical to ensure transparency in institutions, Snyder said.

“It’s tricky,” Snyder said. “Under the public records act, by design, government agencies are not allowed to single out the requesters based on the reasons for which they want the records.”

ref

Industries Turn Freedom of Information Requests on Their Critics

Image

By :{Elizabeth Williamson:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;text-size-adjust:100%;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-color:#cccccc;"):}:

Nov. 5, 2018
-

WASHINGTON — Dennis J. Ventry Jr., a law professor at the University of California, Davis, drew the ire of tax preparation companies like Intuit and H&R Block this summer by criticizing a deal they have to provide a free tax filing service through the Internal Revenue Service.

The companies promptly hit back with a tactic that corporations, lobbyists and interest groups are increasingly using against academic researchers: Their trade coalition filed a public records request with the university in July seeking everything Mr. Ventry had written or said about the companies this year, including emails, text messages, voice mail messages and hand-jotted notes.

Theuniversity estimated that it spent 80 to 100 hours complying with the request, filed under the California Public Records Act, which requires employees of any state agency or institution to produce, upon request from any member of the public, any record that relates to “the conduct of the public’s business” that is “prepared, owned, used or retained” by the university.

The request generated 1,189 pages of documents, university officials said. And it was just one example of how both state-level public records laws and the federal Freedom of Information Act, written to ensure transparency and accountability in government, have morphed into potent weapons in legal and business disputes, raising questions about the chilling effects — and costs — they impose on targets who are doing research in controversial or sensitive fields.

A 2017 analysis of requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act found that “public-oriented inquiries by concerned citizens and their advocates” account for “only a small fraction of the 700,000-plus FOIA requests submitted each year,” wrote David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University, whose paper reviewed studies on the issue. “The bulk of requests come from businesses seeking to further their own commercial interests by learning about competitors, litigation opponents or the regulatory environment.”

Public records requests have long been an important tool for a wide variety of groups, like journalists, political opposition researchers, climate-science skeptics, animal rights advocates and anti-abortion activists keen to dig into research and the work of people in the government.

But the sheer scale of the requests in recent years, and their growing use by advocacy groups and business interests to challenge academic work at public universities, has alarmed some experts, who say the commitment to openness embodied by freedom of information laws could be tested.

The weaponization of such requests poses “a real danger that we’ll hit a tipping point, where the cost and burden of open records laws will overcome the benefits and we’ll have a retrenchment of transparency rights,” said Margaret Kwoka, a University of Denver professor with expertise in government transparency litigation. “This kind of abuse fuels the political will to do that.”

The University of California system, with nearly 45,000 faculty and academic appointees on its campuses and in its laboratories and medical centers, sits at the center of this trend.

In 2009, the system received a total of 3,266 public records requests. In 2017, it received 16,921, an increase of 418 percent.

A significant portion of the requests are from activists and industry groups “using public records requests as one part of a strategy to undermine the work of researchers in controversial fields,” Maria Shanle, managing counsel for education affairs and governance at the University of California, said in an interview.

These have included a 2011 request for every document a visiting scholar produced related to “chemical substances, includingflame retardants”; a 2012 demand by an anti-abortiongroup for the names of researchers working on an abortion safety study; and a 2015 request for every email to and from a journalism professor that contained words like “biotech” and “Monsanto.”

Image

“What we need is a dividing line between financial and ministerial accountability, and the university’s function as an intellectual and teaching institution,” Claudia Polsky, an assistant law professor who directs the Environmental Law Clinic at the University of California in Berkeley, said in an interview.

In a paper titled “Open Records, Shuttered Labs: Ending Political Harassment of Public University Researchers,” Ms. Polsky argued for legislative protections, already offered in some states, for unpublished emails and other personal records that can be used to stymie research.

“Digging into professors’ email inboxes has nothing to do with democratic accountability or fiscal transparency,” she said, “and everything to do with creating ideologically based mischief.”

In Mr. Ventry’s case, he said he did not have anything to hide — he has been a critic of the tax preparation program, Free File, and an outspoken advocate for no-cost, simplified, government-provided tax preparation for years. But he said that the request had made collaborators in his research wary of communicating with him and amounted to intimidation by the industry.

“They are trying to bully me,” Mr. Ventry said of the industry group. “More importantly, they are trying to chill my research and scholarship, whether it has to do with tax law reform or not.”

The industry group, the Free File Alliance, whose legal name is Free File Inc., defended the request as a proper use of public records law.

Mr. Ventry, the group said, had a conflict of interest because he also serves as the chairman of an outside advisory group to the I.R.S. and was intent on promoting an alternative plan under which the government would offer its own tax preparation service through the I.R.S. The alliance defends its program as benefiting low- and middle-income Americans who would otherwise have to pay for tax preparation services.

Freedom of information requests “are a legitimate, legal method to determine what public officials are doing and saying in their official capacity,” the alliance said in an emailed statement. “Professor Ventry holds a strong preconceived bias against the I.R.S. Free File program.”

Mr. Ventry is not employed by the I.R.S. He is the chairman of the Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council, a public forum on tax administration issues that advises the I.R.S. commissioner and is composed of outside experts who volunteer their time. He was a published critic of Free File for years before joining the council.

Mr. Ventry; Joseph Bankman, a tax law professor at Stanford University; and others have worked over the years to create a model for free tax-filing programs administered by a half-dozen states, while advocating a free, streamlined federal e-filing system.

In July, Mr. Ventry, Mr. Bankman and other colleagues wrote op-eds taking aim at Free File, which the I.R.S. offers to many taxpayers through an agreement with the Free File Alliance, which includes Intuit, makers of TurboTax and other software; H&R Block; and 10 additional commercial tax preparation companies.

After the House passed a bill that included a provision making the Free File agreement permanent, the academics raised alarms. Citing research, I.R.S. statistics and investigations by ProPublica, The Wall Street Journal and others, Mr. Ventry wrote that Free File is a “failed program” that “inflicts substantial harm on taxpayers” by confusing them, pushing them toward paid products and failing to fully protect their personal data.

The companies in the Free File program are not compensated by the I.R.S. for providing their services. But ending the program and replacing it with a government-run electronic filing service for all taxpayers would threaten the industry.

Image

In a July opinion piece:{ :(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;text-size-adjust:100%;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"):}:in The Hill titled “Free File Providers Scam Taxpayers; Congress Shouldn’t Be Fooled,” Mr. Ventry originally included his affiliation as chairman of the tax agency’s advisory council as well as his academic post. (After a complaint from the industry group, he removed the affiliation to the council.)

In a subsequent commentary, the academics criticized the I.R.S. for poor oversight of the industry agreement, saying that Free File “puts tax preparation companies first and taxpayers last.” Some of the criticism echoed the I.R.S.’s independent taxpayer advocate, Nina E. Olson, who said in an interview that Free File was a “poorly designed” program that only 3 percent of eligible taxpayers used after 15 years in existence.

Days later, the University of California received the request for all of Mr. Ventry’s communications about the op-eds, including his contacts with the I.R.S. taxpayer advocate’s office.

In addition to its public records requests, the alliance wrote directly to the I.R.S. about Mr. Ventry in July, saying he “improperly used his I.R.S. affiliation to lend credibility to this attack.” The alliance questioned whether Mr. Ventry should be able to speak out publicly on the issue given his role on the I.R.S. advisory council.

Mr. Ventry said that role was strictly advisory and that he received no compensation aside from his university salary. After the industry alliance leveled the complaint, he says he voluntarily recused himself from the council’s analysis of the Free File program, due out in November.

Responding to the academics’ criticism in a letter to the editor published in the policy journal Tax Notes, Tim Hugo, a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates who serves as the alliance’s executive director, wrote that the partnership between the I.R.S. and Free File had saved taxpayers “an estimated $1.6 billion in tax preparation and filing fees” since its inception in 2003.

The program was under attack, he wrote, “by a handful of ideologues” who “want a centralized system of direct government tax preparation.”

Representatives for Intuit and H&R Block said the companies did not participate in the records requests by the industry group, but the alliance confirmed that the member companies received the documents produced by the university.

Stanford is a private institution not subject to public records requests under the California law, but the alliance’s lawyers used the University of California request to obtain Mr. Ventry’s communications with Mr. Bankman, too.

“There’s nothing really that interesting in my emails,” Mr. Bankman said in an interview. But worries about such requests, he said, stifle the peer review process, a freewheeling exchange of views, often by email, in which academics around the world evaluate one another’s work.

Companies often request such emails “to intimidate people like us, because it really raises the ante and makes it very scary just to email stuff,” he added. For the industry, “it’s a freebie,” he said. “But imagine you’re some young professor somewhere — you don’t know what hit you.”

Mr. Ventry said he was more worried that Mr. Bankman and other colleagues would shy away from collaborating with him.

“We went from emailing multiple times a day over the course of a couple months to not emailing at all,” he said. The request “stifled not just academic freedom but the deliberative and beneficial process of thinking through problems with others.”

If that constitutes winning for the tax industry, he said, “they won.”

CMD Wins Reversal of Restrictive DOJ Public Records Policy

By ExposedByCMD Editors (Press Release) — Group obtains more than 3,000 records relating to former Attorney General Schimel’s war on the Affordable Care Act.

STILL AT IT

===

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/29/michael-mann-statement-arizona-emails-released-eeli

Nearly a decade ago, in late 2009, a server at the University of East Anglia was hacked and thousands of emails from the university’s Climatic Research Unit were subsequently released in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks. Within these thousands of emails, climate change deniers attempted to cherry-pick a few sentences to falsely suggest scientific malfeasance. This so-called “Climategate” incident managed to briefly cast doubt on the public’s acceptance of the scientific realities of climate change. But ultimately, numerous investigations found there was no wrongdoing, and the media storm was found to only have a fleeting public impact.

I have discussed the manufactured scandal in the context of the larger industry-funded, bad faith attack on climate science in my book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

In increasingly desperate attempts to recreate this short-lived machination, there have since been repeated efforts to obtain my and other climate scientists’ emails via fishing expeditions through misuse of the legal system. Led by David Schnare, one coal-funded group masquerading as a think tank — which currently goes by the name of Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) — brought a lawsuit in Virginia seeking to obtain virtually every email I had ever sent or received during the six years I was a professor at the University of Virginia.

The case was struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court, but E&E Legal has continued to essentially relitigate the matter in friendlier forums. E&E Legal targeted two other prominent climate scientists at the University of Arizona, Jonathan Overpeck and Malcolm Hughes (the latter being one of my longtime co-authors), seeking a total of 13 years of emails from them, including correspondence with or about me or my research.

Much of the litigation over scientists’ emails is done via state open records laws. These laws, which (nobly) allow taxpayers to request copies of government records, have been misused by anti-science groups to target scientific research. Unfortunately, hostile groups have attempted to use these laws to conduct witch hunts by requesting years and years of emails from public university professors. In response to this abuse by both conservative and liberal groups, many states have started implementing reforms and clarifying that university research should be awarded certain protections under open records laws. But for the states which have not yet caught up — such as Arizona — it has a destructive and chilling long-term impact on public universities and their faculty.

It impedes the abilities of public university researchers to pursue collaborative research with private universities, and damages the ability of public universities to compete for recruitment of the best minds. Given a choice between subjecting oneself to effectively being watched by “Big Brother” at a public university, or avoiding all of this at a private university, who would choose the public university?

I have spent much effort in the years since “Climategate” explaining why scientists’ research correspondence needs to be protected from legal bullying. Anyone who truly cares about the research can and should review the published papers and underlying data, directly evaluating a study’s methodologies, analyses, and conclusions. But seeking thousands of emails serves only to stifle collaboration and discourage the frank, creative exchange of ideas, and chill the candor needed during the confidential peer review process.

Why request emails then? Because it provides opportunities for hostile groups to take phrases, including scientific jargon, out of context in order to mislead and confuse the public. And because the time-intensive demands of legal review and litigation diverts time, energy, and resources away from science.

This is not mere conjecture; these outcomes were observed during “Climategate” and replicated many times since. Unfortunately, in the recent Arizona case, the judge seemingly did not understand the importance of protecting scientific research and ordered the release of thousands of my colleagues’ emails — and by extension, many of my emails I exchanged with them.

E&E Legal has called climate scientists “alarmists” and claims to have a mission of “free market environmentalism.” It has argued that researchers should be forced to turn over every email in the name of “transparency.” (Interestingly, however, E&E Legal does not offer up its own emails or, more importantly, the names of its funders.)

I have fought repeatedly to protect myself and other researchers, and our emails, from groups like E&E Legal who have no interest whatsoever in legitimate scientific discourse but instead seek to misrepresent and malign scientists in an effort to undermine the public’s faith in climate science.

E&E Legal will no doubt post the Arizona emails once they receive them, distributing them online with a series of misleading and disingenuous mischaracterizations, choosing a few phrases here and there to misrepresent me and other scientists and to falsely accuse us of all manner of misdeeds.

Consequently, I am sharing my emails here (enter “mail_guest” for both username and password). Moreover, a group of independent climate science experts have gone through the emails providing context for interpreting the exchanges and discussions contained within.

To see context notes, click the link at the bottom of an email:

[img]

Of course, I wish I did not need to do this.

But since these emails will be handed over any day now to David Schnare, it is our hope to use this exercise instead as a teaching moment and an opportunity to further public appreciation and understanding of science, by

(a) using these emails to show how scientists are making an honest and diligent effort to understand the science underlying Earth’s climate system,

(b) showing how scientists are engaged in the good-faith give-and-take that is central to the scientific enterprise, which includes appropriate skepticism and critical assessment not only of other scientists’ work but our own, as evident through internal deliberations between the scientists, and

(c) demonstrating the understandable frustration that scientists have with those who intentionally misrepresent them and their research for the purpose of advancing an ideological agenda.

Dr. Michael Mann

new cointelpro blk extremists

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-fbi-appears-to-be-engaged-in-a-modern-day-version-of-cointelpro-aclu-racial-justice-program-deputy-director/

Janine Jackson interviewed Nusrat Choudhury about FBI targeting of black activists for the :{April 12, 2019, episode:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: In the summer of 2017, as demonstrations roiled St. Louis, Missouri, in response to the acquittal of yet another police officer who killed yet another black person, the FBI issued an intelligence assessment that purported to designate a new domestic terror threat: “Black Identity Extremists.” And they predicted that

"perceptions of unjust treatment of African Americans and the perceived unchallenged illegitimate actions of law enforcement will inspire premeditated attacks against law enforcement.

Does that sound like a bizarre and dangerously imprecise targeting of people of color engaged in righteous and constitutionally protected protest? It sure does.

But as we discussed at the time with our next guest, a tool in the hands of the country’s most powerful law enforcement need not be precise to be used to do tremendous damage.

Nusrat Choudhury is deputy director of the**ACLU**Racial Justice Program. She joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Nusrat Choudhury.

NC: Thank you so much for having me.

JJ:When we spoke with you in the fall of 2017, the FBI Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit had just issued this weird and disturbing threat assessment, with this new fabricated category of “Black Identity Extremists.” And the ACLU and other groups were working to see just what they were doing—how was this being used? And the FBI wasn’t all that keen for the sunshine. What has happened, or not happened, since then, such that now the ACLU, along with the Center for Media Justice, have filed a lawsuit against the FBI?

NC: As you said, we requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, records about what appears to be a highly disturbing surveillance program, targeting a fictitious threat of so-called “Black Identity Extremists,” which we and civil rights groups, black-led organizations, black activists and even members of Congress have said raises a red flag that there may be racial profiling and the targeting of black protesters for their First Amendment–protected activity.

After sending that Freedom of Information Act request, what we got back from the FBI were two letters, refusing to even search for certain categories of records that we had requested, and a number of documents, several hundred pages of highly redacted FBI emails, in response to one of the three categories of requested records.

And the FBI, to the extent that it has disclosed any information, hasn’t explained why it’s keeping that information secret with any reliable justifications. So we don’t really know what else is even out there, as well as information from the emails that they’ve redacted.

And this refusal to search is barring the public from getting the information that we need to find out how this surveillance program, targeting this fictitious group that even some law enforcement have said doesn’t exist, is operating and impacting people on the ground.

And that’s why we need a lawsuit. And we the ACLU are standing with our partners at the Center for Media Justice to demand information on behalf of ourselves and the public.

JJ: You’re describing it as a surveillance program. I was going to ask, what sorts of activities do we think that this designation is trying to justify, or is trying to encourage? I mean, it sounds like it could be almost anything. Once you’ve designated something a domestic terrorist threat, it sort of greenlights all kinds of activities, mightn’t it?

NC: The FBI appears to be engaged in a modern-day version of COINTELPRO, and many of us remember, COINTELPRO took place in the last century, in the ’50s and ’60s, targeting covert activities against civil rights leaders and black people who had the courage to protest racial discrimination and to advocate for full equality and racial equity in this country. It looks like it’s version 2.0.

4/19...

spn pervert union

https://xxx.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/15/rightwing-thinktanks-secret-plot-against-unions

...

previous SPN literature exposed by the Guardian has revealed the political motives behind the network’s attacks on unions. It aims to “defund and defang” public sector unions as a means to “reverse the failed policies of the American left”.

The goal, the group said, was “permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle”.

The Guardian has now obtained what SPN is calling a “toolkit” of advice to its followers on how to go about fomenting “union reform” – a euphemism for draining unions of members and cash. The “toolkit” sets out four “tactics” for depleting their power – “effective union reform”, in its language.

One of those tactics is the opt-out campaign.

“To get employees to opt-out of their union,” the documents say, “they first need to know they have a choice. A direct marketing campaign to union represented public employees that combines mail and digital outreach helps raise awareness and raise opt-out rates.”

The SPN blueprint sets out how to acquire the private details of union members through statefreedom of information lawsso that opt-out propaganda can be targeted directly at them. It says: “Access to lists of union members is essential to this project. The most common means of obtaining lists is through requests made under state public records laws.”

The toolkit is being circulated at a vital moment for public sector trade unions. The wave of school teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere has reinvigorated the labor movement as a key part of the resistance to stagnating wages, waning resources and a hostile White House.

More perilously, the US supreme court is poised to deliver its ruling any day in Janus v AFSCME, one of the most important trade union cases in recent times. If the five conservative justices on the highest court vote in favor of the anti-union plaintiff, as many expect, they would deal a severe blow to organized labor by giving employees the right to opt-out of paying their share of the costs of collective bargaining even though they benefit from negotiated higher wages and improved conditions.

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09052017/foia-donald-trump-interior-department-missing-climate-change-data-websites

As Donald Trump's administration continues to strip climate change information from federal websites, two advocacy groups and a conservation biologist are using a novel technique to try to force the government to republish the pages.

A new provision in open records law, added by Congress last year, requires agencies to publish electronically any information that isrequested at least three times through the federal Freedom of Information Act, so long as that information is not otherwise exempt from disclosure. Last week, the advocacy groups and the biologist submitted identical requests for climate change information, hoping to trigger that provision, and they just might succeed.

"The law is pretty explicit," said Aaron Mackey, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes transparency. "The law just says, if you get three, then you have to affirmatively disclose it. This should work."

The effort by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Stuart Pimm, a professor at Duke University, is the latest in a broad campaign by scientists and advocates to cache federal data about climate change and other topics that they fear may be deleted by the Trump administration.

Volunteers have gathered formassive "data rescue" events to download information. Advocates have sued. Now, the groups are trying to use the Freedom of Information Act and the new provision to get the government, starting with the Interior Department, to re-post its old climate change webpages.

Last month, the Department of Interior quietly edited its climate change page, removing an extensive discussion of the effects of global warming and the department's work on the issue and replacing it with two short paragraphs that do not discuss any details of the impacts of climate change. Instead, it provided links to its bureau's climate change pages, including the page of the Bureau of Land Management, which no longer exists, and others that have been edited.

"The changes basically remove any information about the causes of climate change, most notably mankind's contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere," said Amy Atwood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's just absurd."

Paul Ross, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said in a statement emailed to InsideClimate News that "the Department's website has been updated periodically over the past few months to include additional priorities of the Department under new leadership." He declined to address the public records requests.

The department has 20 business days to reply to the requests. Atwood said her group would appeal if the requests are denied.

The new requirement in the open records law was an attempt to codify what has long been considered best practice, Mackey said. The overarching goal of the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, is to make government more transparent, so it encourages agencies to publish information that is frequently requested or may be of broad interest, such as administrative decisions. Many agencies, including the Interior Department, have online "reading rooms" where they make such documents available.

Mackey said that while the spirit of the law implies that agencies should publish information that's requested three times in an easily accessible area, like an online reading room, it contains no explicit direction beyond requiring them to make it "available for public inspection in an electronic format."

After the EPA removed its climate change page, it published an archived version following a series of FOIA requests. But it also removed links that would have made that archived page easy to find from the EPA's homepage. Atwood said the groups would use the same FOIA tactics to retrieve the information if the EPA deletes the archived page, or if the EPA or any other agency removes similar information.

This isn't the first time the groups have attempted to use the FOIA provision. In March, theysubmitted requests to eight federal agencies seeking hundreds of environmental data sets out of concern that the Trump administration would remove them from public view.

Atwood said they've gotten a range of responses so far. The Department of Agriculture has been working with them to try to identify and publish the data, she said, while others have simply rejected their requests or claimed—sometimes erroneously, according to Atwood—that the data was already published. The group is currently preparing to appeal those denied requests, and ultimately will go to court if the appeals fail.

The Center for Biological Diversity has also used more conventional FOIA requests to try to pry loose documents from the Trump administration, including records regarding whether leaders at several agenciesdirected their staffs to stop using the term "climate change." Last week, the group sued the EPA in attempt to compel it to release emails and a schedule for its administrator, Scott Pruitt, after the agency denied a request seeking those records. Atwood said she expects to file an average of one lawsuit each week as the group's FOIA requests are denied.

"We're really in a position to be able to pursue information from the Trump administration," Atwood said, "and we're doing it at every turn.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2016

Conspiracy theorising Lamar Smith can't hack change

I see that Lamar Smith hasn't been able to find any evidence for his conspiracy theory yet, so he's asked NOAA for more emails. He complained that he "only" got 301 pages of emails. He figured the search terms were "unnecessarily narrow". If you want to get a feel for Lamar's conspiracy theory that climate change is a Presidential hoax, he now wants NOAA to send him all emails containing any of the following words:

Karl

buoy

ship

Night Marine Air Temperature

temperature

climate

change

Paris

U.N.

United Nations

clean power plan

regulations

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

President

Obama

White House

Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

He gave them seven whole days. In his next request, he'll no doubt separate words white from house, united from nations, clean from power and plan, Council from quality, and maybe boy as well as buoy, etc. He might also widen temperature to temp, which would allow him to get any emails relating to temporary whatever.

I sincerely hope that he gets sent all emails that include stuff like:

"there's been a change to my mobile phone number"

"can you change the staff meeting to 2:00 pm"

"Lamar Smith is spelt with an "i" not a "y". Change all versions of "Smyth" to "Smith""

"please ship the staplers to our Seattle office"

If he does, then he'll probably spend years trying to work out the coded messages in the above.

This could go on forever. Will Lamar Smith call for NOAA's budget to be expanded to cover the cost of his private army of email searchers? As Gavin Schmidt tweeted:

Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin

More abuse of congressional authority for pointless fishing expeditions:

"All email containing the word 'change'" https://twitter.com/sjvatn/status/703367492027195394 …

3:55 AM - 27 Feb 2016

33 33 Retweets 21 21 likes

Nobody makes them like the Republican Party in the USA. Nutty as a fruit cake.

References

Latest demand letter from Lamar Smith to NOAA

Congressman demands more NOAA e-mails about climate study - article by Scott K Johnson at Ars Technica

http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/02/conspiracy-theorising-lamar-smith-cant.html

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/congressman-demands-more-noaa-e-mails-about-climate-study/

As part of his ongoing fight with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX) sent a February 22 letter that demanded documents related to the agency's analysis of global temperature data. NOAA handed over 301 pages of e-mails between NOAA officials (but not scientists) pertaining to a study published last year in the journal Science. There apparently wasn’t anything juicy in those e-mails, however, because Rep. Smith is now asking for a great deal more.

A new letter (initially acquired by the Union of Concerned Scientists) complains that “[i]t seems unlikely that documents and communications would be so scarce,” and Smith directs NOAA to cast a wider net. He requests e-mails and documents not just from officials in the offices that had been targeted by the previous requests but also from “agency employees” across a broad swath of NOAA. The list includes the National Centers for Environmental Information that houses the scientists behind NOAA's global temperature dataset—a group Rep. Smith has accused of manipulating data.

NOAA had apparently searched for e-mails including “hiatus”, “global temperature”, and “climate study”, but Rep. Smith wants that list expanded dramatically. Now, he wants NOAA to hand over anything that contains “Karl” (the name of the lead NOAA scientist on the Science paper), “buoy”, “ship”, “Night Marine Air Temperature”, “temperature”, “climate”, “change”, “Paris”, “U.N.”, “United Nations”, “clean power plan”, “regulations”, “Environmental Protection Agency”, “President”, “Obama”, “White House”, and “Council on Environmental Quality”.

Those (very broad) terms reflect the fact that Rep. Smith hopes to find that climate data was manipulated due to a directive from the Obama Administration. (It should be noted that NOAA’s dataset looks the same as everyone else’s, and Smith already has access to the data and details on how it was analyzed.)

Rep. Smith also cites a letter to sent him by “325 scientists, engineers, economists, and other scholars raising serious inquiries about the adherence of NOAA to [Office of Management and Budget] guidelines established under the Data Quality Act.” That letter was circulated around climate “skeptic” circles for signatures by retired physicist and George C. Marshall Institute chairman William Happer. Rep. Smith’s has yet to acknowledge the protest letters sent by a number of major scientific organizations, however.

FOIA 2

The George Mason case

State by state...

Why New York Is Suing

Exxon's Letters to the Witnesses

Attorney: 'It's Pretty Unorthodox'

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Climate Denial Efforts Target Media, Cities Filing Liability Suits

FURTHER READING