Judge tells White House to hand over docs in dispute over climate video

Politico reports on CEI's FOIA lawsuit agains the White House's Office of Science and Technology.

A federal judge today ordered the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy to hand over several documents to a conservative think tank in a dispute related to a 2014 video linking the so-called polar vortex with climate change.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a FOIA lawsuit against OSTP after the agency declined to change the video . The White House said OSPT Director John Holdren was expressing his own opinion on the science, not formal administration policy.

Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, ruled today that OSTP must turn over a five-page letter Holdren shared with Rutgers University professor Jennifer Francis, an expert on climate change and the Arctic. Mehta concluded that OSTP cannot claim Francis was acting as a consultant, and thus withhold the document, because Francis had some interest in whether the video was changed.

Read the full article at Politico