from Sierra Club Santa Lucian newspaper
This is presented in only pdf format from Sierra Club. I felt it should be presented as a full article on the SierraClub website or another site, so i am posting it here.
(Transcription mine as are errors)
#ExxonKnew
We Will Not Comply with Your Unprecedented and Unlawful Subpoena (Letter of April 13, 2017)
#Resistance in #TrumpTime: What happened when a Texas Congressman looking to do a favor for his fossil fuel friends ran into 17 State Attorneys General
As we reported last year, (‘Hot Enough for Them?,” March 2016) the room started getting uncomfortably warm for ExxonMobil in 2015 when New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opened a year-long probe of what Exxon (corporate) executives knew and when they knew it regarding the reality of man-made global warming, a reality they had long been acknowledging within their CORPORATE BOARD ROOMS while denying to INVESTORS and CONSUMERS.
In November of that year, Schneiderman issued a subpoena to the oil giant to help determine whether Exxon had violated State laws against security, business, and consumer fraud through potentially false or misleading public statements and disclosures about the impact of climate change on its OPERATIONS and FINANCES.
In July 2016, Republican Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Science Committee, sent the New York Attorney General a subpoena seeking materials from the Exxon investigation. After getting nowhere with that, Rep. Smith issued a new subpoena in February, 2017. Chairman Smith has offered various and shifting explanations for his UNPRECEDENTED SUBPOENAS, including claiming that investigations by the New York and Massachusetts Attorneys General into whether Exxon violated their state laws somehow undermine the First Amendment rights of climate scientists.
On April 13, AG Schneiderman sent a letter to Rep Smith in response to the second subpoena.
The letter states, “We had hoped that with the start of a new Congress, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology would turn its attention exclusively to authorized and legitimate legislative activity. Your Subpoena does otherwise. I write to inform you that the NYOAG cannot and will not comply with the Subpoena as presently composed.’
The subpoena not only seeks material from the AG open state investigation into whether Exxon violated New York securities laws, but reflects an even broader scope than Smith’s prior one—seeking communications not just related to the Exxon investigation but ‘referring or relating to climate change, environmental scientific research, and/or the Clean Power Plan.’
The AG’s letter also notes, ‘An inquiry into the alleged effects of the NYOAG’s state law FRAUD investigation on the research of climate scientists does not require a trove of confidential communications about ongoing law enforcement matters.’
The letter points to the subpoena’s effort to obtain privileged communications among the offices of state attorneys general regarding the Clean Power Plan litigation, as Chairman Smith has filed a brief in the litigation seeking to strike down the plan. That Smith,’a de facto adversary in high-stakes litigation, (is) wielding unilateral subpoena power to demand all privileged communications between the NYOAG and other State Attorneys General about the Clean Power Act is an Unfathomable Offense.
A New York court repeatedly has ordered Exxon to produce documents and Exxon has acknowledged in open court that the AG has ‘the right to conduct’ its fraud investigation under NY law.
No congressional committee has ever subpoenaed a state attorney general, and there is no precedent for a congressional subpoena seeking material from a confidential law enforcement investigation.
The AG’s letter concludes: ‘There can be no ‘legitimate congressional oversight’ of a state law fraud investigation. The Committee chose to pursue (and now to continue) this course, despite the lack of any precedent for such action in our Nation’s recorded history, and despite the obvious constitutional problems your subpoenas have raised, as explained to you by the NYOAG, the Mass AG, several members of your own Committee, other sitting Senators and Representatives, the former AG Counsel of the House of Representatives, and a bevy of federalism and First Amendment scholars.”
The day before AG Schneiderman fired back at Rep. Smith, fifteen (15) other Attorneys General including California AG Xavier Becerra weighed in on behalf of Schneiderman and Mass AG Maura Hesley, another target of Rep. Smith’s EXXON-protective attentions.
They pointed out to Smith that both of his subpoenas exceeded his Committee’s constitutional authority and departed from the “proper respect for state functions” which the Supreme Court has laid down as a marker to clarify the authority of federal and state governments and the dividing line between them.
They also noted the interest, nay exact, similarity in wording between portions of Rep. Smiths’ subpoena and several discovery requests filed by Exxon against AG Schneiderman and Hesley in a suit filed by the oil company in Texas district court—further underscoring ‘the concern that Exxon may be trying to obtain, via the Committee’s subpoena, discovery that it is seeking in those Texas court proceedings and is unable to obtain due to…pending motions to dismiss.’
The Attorneys General did not congratulate Rep. Smith for his outstanding constituents service.