Just as prescribed, Michael Bloomberg’s privately hired and placed “Special Assistant Attorneys General” are busy trying to block Trump administration regulatory reforms. Consider the long roster of “SAAGs” provided to willing AGs who are active in today’s filing in the DC Circuit, which seeks to block the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule replacing the Obama EPA’s backdoor climate regime.
Those rules, part of the now notorious plan to put “a lot” of people out of work, were implemented after the Harry Reid-controlled Senate declined to put their own jobs on the line legislating the agenda. That came too late for the House members who voted for it, though at least some current Members learned the lesson to avoid such votes in favor of leaving it to agencies who don’t have to directly answer to voters. Hence the passion behind today’s filing.
CLW readers are well-aware that major political donor Michael Bloomberg created a group to staff up AGs to defend those priorities. Bloomberg-provided lawyers planted in AG offices on today’s suit include:
– Megan Herzog in Massachusetts AG Maura Healey’s Office;
– let’s just say “several” in Maryland AG Brian Frosh’s Office (at least one of whom we know is an illegal placement, though there is no apparent statutory authority for any of them to work in that role);
– Anne Minard in “Street Fighter” New Mexico AG Hector Balderas’s Office;
– Gavin McCabe in New York (whose Bloomberg-group arrangement NY OAG recently insisted to a court it prematurely terminated, what with all of those nagging ethics and other questions it raised);
– Oregon’s Steve Novick, whose appointment the Oregon Legislative Counsel said was not a legal one, either;
– and of course Peter Surdo in Minnesota AG Keith Ellison’s Office, an arrangement never announced by either party but discovered thanks to Mr. Surdo’s desire to tell the world via his LinkedIn profile.
Reference email: Busy Team Bloomberg (PDF)