Group: Al Gore using ‘McCarthy-style tactics’ to criminalize climate change critics

The Washington Examiner reports on the subpoena that is an affront on CEI's First Amendment rights. 

The well-respected Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute said Friday that it has been hit with a subpoena for climate research documents and even donor lists from 1997-2007 from one of the attorneys in the Gore group. CEI was given three weeks to provide the 20-year-old documents.

CEI, which said it promotes "sound climate change policy," is fighting the subpoena from Virgin Island Attorney General Claude E. Walker and what it described as an intimidation campaign.

"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," said CEI general counsel Sam Kazman in a statement. "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."

"CEI has long been a champion of sound climate change policy, and opposed previous attempts to use McCarthy-style tactics by officials aiming to limit discussions between nonprofit policy groups and the private sector regarding federal policies. CEI is being represented in this matter by attorneys Andrew M. Grossman and David B. Rivkin, Jr., who recently founded the Free Speech in Science Project to defend First Amendment rights against government abuses."

Read the full article at the Washington Examiner.