Yesterday CLW noted an article in the Daily Caller touting some Republican AG criticism of billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg’s scheme to privately hire and promote the work of activist attorneys as “Special Assistant Attorneys General”, so long as they were tasked with pushing Bloomberg’s desired (policy) agenda.
The article also amplified about the disparity in media coverage first raised by CLW, here and here.
Excerpts:
Bloomberg’s willingness to dump money on groups is effectively crowding out media criticism of his work at the SEEIC, according to Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) Executive Director Adam Piper. “These folks are the definition of mercenaries,” he told the DCNF, referring to the SEEIC fellows.
“Imagine if Donald Trump in 2012 … decided to put a bunch of grants together to put a bunch of sources inside Republican attorneys general offices,” Piper said, noting what he believes is the media’s poor coverage of Bloomberg’s donations. RAGA’s sole mission is to elect Republican attorneys general.
[Georgia’s Republican AG Christopher] Carr, [Indiana AG Curtis] Hill and other Republican AGs are speaking up as reports show Bloomberg secretly founded a tech company called Hawkfish in 2019 to help collect data on voters and promote his run for president. Hawkfish was also designed to help Democratic candidates in Virginia and elsewhere win congressional seats in 2018. Democrats retook the U.S. House of Representatives that year.
Reports on Hawkfish, as well as Paxton’s criticisms regarding SEEIC, also come as Bloomberg News announced in November that its reporters will not conduct investigative reporting on any of the Democratic presidential candidates, including Bloomberg himself.
The outlet “will continue to investigate the Trump administration,” Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait wrote in a note to staffers in November, the month Bloomberg announced his bid. He also said two of Bloomberg News’s top opinion editors, Tim O’Brien and David Shipley, would join their boss’s presidential campaign.