CLW readers may be familiar with Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh’s use of his GMail to serve as lead recruiter for the Michael Bloomberg-funded group planting activist attorneys in state AG offices, even receiving on the QT the Bloomberg group’s first two bi-weekly reports to “Bloomberg Philanthropies” about the scheme, from current Biden “climate” advisor David Hayes.
They may not know about Maine AG Janet Mills corresponding using her GMail about — and SFAWK, with — Sierra Club lobbyists about joining the climate prosecution conga line. But surely all recall the promiscuous use of unofficial accounts by Obama EPA officials to correspond with green-group activists, including an infamous Yahoo account. (AOL and GMail accounts turned up for one official who has returned as a top dog via the Biden Administration.)
And of course “Richard Windsor” not only used a false identity for a federal account, but his alter ego Lisa Jackson used a Verizon account to correspond with, e.g., Sierra Club.
A little closer to home for these purposes, recall the scandal-plagued former Governor of Oregon’s GMail account.
CLW believes it sees a pattern here.
Now we find Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s GMail was used with recruiters for the climate litigation industry, Center for Climate Integrity, on a first-name basis no less.
This email and attachment were responsive to a records request by Energy Policy Advocates for certain email “sent to or from or which copies Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum”, not limited to any particular email address. Yet both were glaringly omitted from the production. EPA only noticed it because AG Rosenblum forwarded this particular email not to her official account, but to select colleagues, seeking help in her collaboration with the green group lobbyists who want her to file suit against their ideological opponents.
The answer to why the email was not originally produced should not be that, well, it was on her GMail account: using private accounts to conduct official business doesn’t make the business any less official, or public. It only serves to remove the records outside of someone else’s responsible custody until discovered. Which is why, when pressed, Oregon’s DoJ turned these over.
This is true in Oregon. It’s hard to imagine this fact has escaped the Attorney General of Oregon, where this practice of using GMail by high elected officials has, erm, made the headlines.
How much more lurks in that account, just with the climate litigation industry given, e.g., the clear comfort and familiarity reflected in this email? And also given the record of which CLW is aware of the Bloomberg group which provided private attorneys to Rosenblum and others to help them file such climate suits often used AG and AG staff’s’ private accounts?
These practices now revealed warrant close scrutiny. Whether or not legislators and journalists pick up the thread, it seems inevitable that this becomes an issue should Oregon’s AG agree to this lobbying campaign, and enter the climate cash sweepstakes.