Free Speech Attack by Attorneys General in ExxonMobil Climate Change Probe of Skeptical Non-Profit

Reason reports on the subpoena sent to CEI by an attorney general in efforts to silence the climate change debate. 

In service of this goal, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands Claude Walker has issued a subpoena to the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute. According to CEI, the subpoena demands that the non-profit produce "a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information. It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016." It is probably no accident that Walker worked for eight years as an attorney for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In response to the USVI's action, CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman vowed, “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."

Read the full article at Reason