Energy

AGs Investigating Exxon Refuse To Comply With House GOP Subpoena

REUTERS/Mike Segar

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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The attorneys general investigating global warming skeptics are refusing to comply with subpoenas from House Republicans.

Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith issued the subpoenas July 13 to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and eight environmental groups, demanding records on their investigation into ExxonMobil’s global warming activities.

The request has not gone over well.

The subpoena is “an unprecedented effort” bringing the two sides “closer to a protracted, unnecessary legal confrontation,” Schneiderman’s attorney wrote in a letter Tuesday. He added that enforcing Smith’s subpoena would interfere with the attorney general’s investigation.

Leslie Dubeck, Schneiderman’s attorney, said the AG “cannot and will not comply with it.”

Healey declined to comply with the subpoena as well. Her attorney, Richard Johnston, wrote it’s “an unconstitutional and unwarranted interference with a legitimate ongoing state investigation.”

Schneiderman began his Exxon investigations in November, arguing the oil producer misled investors for more than 40 years on the risks associated with global warming. Healy began her own probe into Exxon shortly thereafter.

“The attorneys general have appointed themselves to decide what is valid and what is invalid regarding climate change. The attorneys general are pursuing a political agenda at the expense of scientists’ right to free speech,” Smith, who chairs the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said in a press statement at the time.

He added: “What are they hiding? And Why?”

Smith’s subpoena came shortly after Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid created a Senate schedule on July 11 requesting 19 senators lambaste groups like Americans for Prosperity, Reason Foundation, and Cato Institute for supposedly creating a “web of denial” on so-called man-made global warming.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who was selected as presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s running mate July 22, was tasked with heaping scorn on conservative nonprofit groups in early July for opposing Democratic policies addressing man-made global warming.

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