Climate Realists Fight AGs’ Fishing Expedition

The Heartland Institute reports on the subpoena CEI recieved as part of the attorneys general intimidation campaign to silence the debate on climate change. 

In the Climate Change Weekly released April 5 (CCW 209), I discussed the press conference held by a group of state attorneys general (AG), led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, threatening investigations and possible prosecutions of climate skeptics for speaking their mind. Just days after I wrote that article, on April 7, a subpoena was served on the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) by Claude Walker, attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The subpoena demands CEI produce emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding its work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information, from 1997 through 2007. Walker gave CEI until April 30, 2016 to produce this decades’ worth of material.

CEI responded swiftly and forcefully to the subpoena. CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman issued a statement saying, “CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”

These subpoenas are a fishing expedition with no hope of finding anything remotely illegal since it is not illegal to fund climate research or debate climate science or policy. This harassment is an attempt to silence critics of climate alarmism and the policies of the Obama administration and various states.

Read the full article at the Heartland Institute.