Virgin Islands AG Withdraws Climate Change Subpoena Against Think Tank

The Daily Signal reports on Attorney General Claude Walker revoking a subpoena which was an attack on CEI's First Amendment rights. 

The U.S. Virgin Islands attorney general has revoked his subpoena of the free market think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute as part of an investigation into ExxonMobil Corp. and the energy company’s research about climate change.

Claude E. Walker, the the Virgin Islands attorney general, is one of a 17-member network of state attorneys general who are investigating whether Exxon misled the public and investors about the harm of climate change.

But Walker went further than the other state attorneys general, by including subpoenas to private organizations like Competitive Enterprise Institute, seeking to obtain those groups’ communications with Exxon in order to find evidence that the energy company funded such groups to spread its message opposing climate change regulations.

After Competitive Enterprise Institute resisted Walker’s demands, and took to the public to express its displeasure, Walker has agreed to revoke the subpoena.

“CEI is going forward with our motion for sanctions because Walker’s withdrawal only strengthens our claim that this subpoena was a constitutional outrage from the very beginning, violating our right to free speech and our donors’ right to confidentiality, and threatening the right of all Americans to express views that go against some party line,” said Sam Kazman, the general counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a prepared statement.

Read the full article at The Daily Signal.