By JIM MUSTIAN and SARAH RANKIN<\/p>\n
West Virginia\u2019s Republican attorney general has launched a broad investigation into many of the state\u2019s leading environmental<\/a> groups, demanding a decade of internal records involving their fundraising and climate change<\/a> advocacy as part of a probe into \u201calleged unfair or deceptive acts,\u201d court records show.<\/p>\n The environmental groups decried the inquiry as a sham, and at least two asked a judge Thursday to dismiss subpoenas from the attorney general\u2019s office they described as harassing and overly broad.<\/p>\n At least one other target of the probe, the Sierra Club, was preparing to file a lawsuit of its own when the attorney general\u2019s office withdrew its subpoena, Jonathon Berman, the group\u2019s chief communications officer, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Attorney General JB McCuskey<\/a> has urged federal authorities to investigate and defund certain climate advocacy organizations and has said protecting the state\u2019s fossil fuel energy industry<\/a> from what he\u2019s characterized as overreaching liberal climate and energy policies is a priority of his office.<\/p>\n The subpoenas seek records related to the groups\u2019 public statements on climate and energy, internal deliberations and requests for donations. The documents offer few details of any alleged deception but say they concern \u201can investigation into alleged unfair or deceptive acts\u201d and invoke \u201cother possible violations\u201d of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act.<\/p>\n \u201cThis investigatory subpoena from our state\u2019s attorney general is nothing more than a fishing expedition intended to stifle our collective voice in our advocacy for clean water, protected public lands and healthy communities,\u201d Jennie Smith, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition \u2014 one of the groups that went to court to fight the subpoena \u2014 said in a statement.<\/p>\n McCuskey, whose office didn\u2019t respond to multiple requests for comment about the investigation, applauded the Trump administration\u2019s move earlier this year<\/a> to revoke an Obama-era scientific finding that had underpinned much of the last 15 years of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n His office also led a successful 22-state challenge against New York state\u2019s climate \u201csuperfund\u201d law, which a federal judge struck down<\/a> earlier this year. The law<\/a>, an attempt to make fossil fuel-producing industries pay into a $75 billion fund for damages related to climate change, exceeded the state\u2019s responsibility, the judge found.<\/p>\n David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor and First Amendment scholar, called the West Virginia investigation \u201cfrivolous\u201d and said the subpoenas should be quashed.<\/p>\n \u201cIf government officials can start prosecuting nonprofit groups because they disagree with the political view they take on a matter of public concern, that would chill a tremendous amount of protected political expression,\u201d Cole told The Associated Press. \u201cThe proper place to fight this out is in the court of public opinion and in the labs of scientists \u2014 not in criminal investigations that essentially seek to weaponize the criminal arm of the state to take sides in a political debate.\u201d<\/p>\n The West Virginia investigation follows similar efforts elsewhere by Republican attorneys general and members of Congress to scrutinize the work of climate-focused advocacy groups.<\/p>\n In Florida, Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier announced in April that his office had issued a subpoena to the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project, which seeks to educate judges on the science of climate change, \u201cas part of an investigation into suspicions\u201d that the nonprofit had violated Florida\u2019s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The group has also faced scrutiny<\/a> from GOP members of Congress.<\/p>\n Uthmeier\u2019s office didn\u2019t respond to an inquiry from AP about where the effort stands.<\/p>\n Nick Collins, a spokesperson for the institute, said in a statement that ELI had faced years of \u201cmeritless allegations\u201d and \u201canswered countless questions and provided thousands of pages of documents.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDespite these facts, certain politicians \u2014 including a number of Republican state attorneys general \u2014 continue to attack ELI\u2019s programs using these same meritless claims,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Uthmeier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By JIM MUSTIAN and SARAH RANKIN West Virginia\u2019s Republican attorney general has launched a broad investigation into many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1894],"tags":[825,42220,402,42219],"class_list":["post-63148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-supreme-court","tag-climate-change","tag-environmental-protections","tag-supreme-court","tag-west-virginia-investigates-climate-advocacy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedStates\/117495599123479864","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/unitedstates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}