This is the second scheme we have found of donors using nonprofits as ‘cutouts’ to provide PR and legal support for climate-activist officeholders.
Hiding in plain sight with a PR campaign announcing the scheme doesn’t make it legal. Key revelations of the report include the following.
Senior AG attorneys flew to brief “prospective funders” of the green pressure group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) on “potential state causes of action against major carbon producers.”
One presenter described this briefing as a “secret meeting.”
It was secret enough that one AG litigated for a year and a half —under implausible claims of government privilege — before being compelled by a court to release the agenda for what was an AG-assisted fundraiser for its back-room counsel and strategist, UCS.
Major donors played matchmaker between “climate” plaintiffs’ lawyers and AGs, leading to private slide shows recruiting for “a single sympathetic state attorney general [who] might have substantial success in bringing key internal documents to light.”
Pro bono does not always mean no one is paying them. For example, NYU is paying an attorney $125,000 per year for two years to work as “pro bono assistant counsel” in the Maryland AG’s office.
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.
Even were a legislature to authorize donors to commandeer law enforcement, they cannot waive constitutional protections, including of due process and separation of powers, both guarantees this arrangement appears to offend. Also, this is the second scheme we have found of donors and elected officials using nonprofits as “cutouts” to provide staff, consultant, PR and legal support for climate-activist officeholders.
