Energy

FBI Mulling Investigation Of Exxon’s Global Warming Stance

REUTERS/Mike Stone

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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The Department of Justice informed Democratic lawmakers their complaints about oil giant ExxonMobil were referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation — the FBI will determine whether to investigate the company’s global warming skepticism.

“As a courtesy, we have forwarded your correspondence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote to California Democratic Reps. [crscore]Ted Lieu[/crscore] and [crscore]Mark DeSaulnier[/crscore] in a letter released Thursday.

DOJ officials admitted they forwarded the letter to the FBI as a “courtesy,” meaning Democrats and environmental activists are still a long way from getting Exxon investigated or potentially punished.

Demands for an FBI investigation come from September reports by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times that Exxon and other oil companies knew about the supposed effects of global warming on sea levels.

Exxon officials say the global warming science they funded resulted in dozens of peer-reviewed studies published publicly, which can be viewed by other scientists and the general public. It’s unclear what the company could have told investors about the risks of global warming that wasn’t already publicly available.

Democratic lawmakers claimed in a letter to the DOJ last month that there might be “a conspiracy between Shell, ExxonMobil and potentially other companies in the fossil fuel industry” to support and fund global warming skepticism.

Lawmakers and environmental activists have demanded that Exxon be prosecuted for funding groups skeptical of the science behind man-made global warming. These groups have argued the government should prosecute fossil fuel companies and global warming skeptics under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — a law created to pursue the mafia and other crime syndicates.

Even Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton endorsed a Justice Department investigation into Exxon in October. The attorneys general of New York and California are investigating Exxon’s climate actions using laws specific to those states.

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