7 Attorney General Offices Are Running Private Investigations For A Billionaire
The Federalist cited Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner on “Law Enforcement for Rent.”
Privately funded “special assistant attorneys general” (SAAGs) are presently working in at least six jurisdictions, under agreements that they focus on matters of importance to the billionaire donor paying their salary and benefits and regularly report back on their activities.
The donor is Michael Bloomberg, and his interest is “climate change.” This unprecedented arrangement raises questions not just of state law, but constitutional concerns that no legislature could waive, regardless of the benefactor or his wealth. I detail this scheme in a new report for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), “Law Enforcement for Rent: How Special Interests Fund Climate Policy through State Attorneys General.”
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The Supreme Court stayed EPA’s marquee proposed rule in February 2016. By April of that year, AGs had subpoenaed even CEI in the quest to impose a rejected policy agenda through the courts. Disgraced former New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman confessed that this campaign “step[ped] into this breach” left by others’ failure to act. That came in a March 29, 2016 press conference with Al Gore and nearly 20 AGs announcing a whatever-means-necessary campaign to use law enforcement in service of the climate agenda.
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Every AG certified that it is legally authorized to allow privately funded prosecutors — provided by a highly interested, activist funder, specifically on issues of interest to the donor —generally without offering any support for the claim. The two AGs who produced records to CEI citing some actual authority pointed to laws that provide no such thing, and indeed appear to prohibit such a move.