As CLW indicated yesterday might be coming, DC Attorney General Karl Racine has now entered the climate litigation sweepstakes. Like Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, and New York’s and Massachusetts’ AGs before him, Mr. Racine is using resources for the job provided him by an outside donor…in an arrangement that, public record responses indicate, was not entered legally.
AG Racine’s application for the private resources foreshadowed this use, which was a well-known priority of the ultimate donor, billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg.
CLW also broke the news about DC AG hiring on the tort firm Sher Edling that has been so aggressive in recruiting plaintiffs to this cause. That firm is also on the complaint along with the six-figure, privately hired “Special Assistant Attorney General” provided to DC OAG by Mr. Bloomberg, and, curiously enough, recommended to DC OAG by the Bloomberg operation.
One dog not barking is the underwriter of this work. CLW previously chronicled in a four-part “Where has all the boasting gone?” series the reversion in form, from being rather chatty about how awesome this obviously on-the-up-and-up arrangement is to…clamming up in the face of actual curiosity about the scheme, vs. fawning WaPo paeans arranged for in rolling out the Bloomberg operation.
Remarkably, the Bloomberg enterprise was not the only one staffing up AG Racine’s office for highly political lawsuits, as broken by The Washington Times and CLW. Since then, we have now learned of copycat groups placing “force multipliers” in the Wisconsin AG’s office, among other friendly venues; so a practice seems to be catching on that — were parties holding different worldviews (say, the Trump DoJ) to mimic — would surely prompt a more thoughtful, or anyway more thorough examination of the propriety of letting out law enforcement in this way.
You can read the DC OAG’s history in the climate litigation industry as reported on CLW, here.
Again, h/t Energy Policy Advocates for the hard work and public records.