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Understanding the Climate Skeptic Witch Hunt in Congress
July 13, 2016The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO for short, is a legal method used by the government to go after mob cartels and criminal organizations like the Hells Angles, Latin Kings, and Gambino crime family. Now add one more name to the list: the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The alleged crime? Being on the wrong side of a policy debate on climate change. A discussion panel was held by Rep. Mike Kelly (R- Pa.) today to educate congressional staff on the detrimental effects of stripping away free speech under the guise of RICO.
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Kim Strassel Offers Prescient Look at Political 'Intimidation Game'
July 13, 2016Prescience is an odd quality to attribute to a book-length treatment of recent history. Nonetheless, The Intimidation Game by Kimberly Strassel adheres closely to Antonio’s observation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest that “What’s past is prologue.”In an era...
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Court Rejects Government Transparency Loophole Manufactured by Obama Administration
July 5, 2016Do federal agencies have the right to shield their records from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) just by transmitting work-related documents via private email? That would seem absurd on the face of it. The... -
Shake Up in Subpoena Land
July 1, 2016This week turned out to be a momentous one in the saga of the climate change subpoenas. It started with three pending subpoenas from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker; it ended with none. In between there was a court hearing, but the demise of subpoenas had little to do with the hearing. And CEI still has a fight on its hands. We continue to pursue...
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Climate Change Witch-Hunt Expands to Include More Innocent Victims, As Conservative AGs Object
June 20, 2016A climate change witch-hunt is expanding to include conservative groups that have never received a penny from Exxon. Attorney General Maura Healey is part of a multistate investigation of “climate change deniers” brought by 20 Democratic state attorneys general. As the Daily Caller notes, last week she issued a sweepingly broad subpoena that
demands decades worth of records from prominent conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation and activist group Americans for Prosperity, and also from smaller, lesser known state-based right-leaning groups, such as Boston’s Beacon Hill Institute and the Acton Institute. . . At least two of the...
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Attorney General Schneiderman's Lame Defense of Speech-Chilling Climate Change Investigation
June 14, 2016When a government official quotes a dissenting opinion that was on the losing side of history to justify a speech-chilling investigation, that’s a pretty clear sign that the First Amendment has been violated. And when that same official doesn’t let you know that it is a dissent, rather... -
Schneiderman's New Catchphrase for Free Speech: "First Amendment Opportunism"
June 14, 2016New in the climate change subpoena saga: Last Thursday New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman delivered a speech (video below) at the Bloomberg Big Law Business Summit defending his investigation against claims that it violates free speech rights. One charge that Schneiderman repeatedly made was that his critics were guilty of “First Amendment opportunism.”
Schneiderman characterized the statements of the...
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A Complaint We Didn't Expect to Hear: Virgin Islands Attorney General Now Says We're Wasting His Time
June 6, 2016Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker filed his opposition last week to CEI’s motions for attorney fees and sanctions. As you may know if you’ve been following this subpoena saga, on April 7 Walker served CEI with a massive document request, covering a decade’s worth of all our work on climate change and energy policy, including confidential information on our donors. This was a violation of both our First Amendment rights and those of our supporters—a view shared by many commenters regardless of their political leanings, and a position forcefully presented by our outside counsel, Andrew Grossman and David Rivkin of Baker Hostetler. Forty-three days after serving the subpoena, Walker withdrew his DC subpoena, though he graciously...
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The Seventh Circuit Considers a Costly But Useless Shareholder Settlement in the Walgreens Merger
June 2, 2016The average merger and acquisition has as much chance of escaping litigation as you have of winning the lottery.
OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. In recent years, about 97 percent of sizable mergers (those valued at $100 million or more) have been hit by shareholder challenges. These challenges usually produce bupkis for shareholders themselves; the typical settlement results in meaningless additions to the proxy materials, extravagant attorney fees to the lawyers bringing the case, and nothing else. And that, unfortunately, is not an exaggeration. The supplemental proxy additions hardly ever provide useful information to the shareholders themselves, who essentially pick up the tab for their attorneys and get nothing in return. And because the merging companies are as eager to finish the deal as the shareholder attorneys are to collect their fees, the settlement proposals...
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CEI Asks Court to Sanction U.S. Virgin Islands AG for Baseless, Retaliatory Subpoena
May 24, 2016On Monday, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker agreed to revoke a subpoena he obtained from the D.C. Superior Court last month, in which he demanded from CEI essentially every document and communication related to climate change policy that we created, sent, or received during the 10-year period from 1997 to 2007.
His withdrawal follows a letter that CEI received on Friday, May 13, from his D.C.-based counsel Linda Singer on his office’s behalf, which purports to rebut some of CEI’s...
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