Daily Caller’s Chris White writes, “Republican attorneys general say billionaire Michael Bloomberg is engaging in a politically partisan ploy to use Democratic AGs to go after energy companies”.
He quotes Indiana Attorney General (AG) Curtis Hill, a Republican, saying:
“What’s problematic is the arrangement through which a private organization or individual can promote an overtly political agenda by paying the salaries of government employees”.
From later in the piece:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has also been a vocal critic of Bloomberg’s group. “The ethical problems with this scheme are obvious,” Paxton, a Republican, said in a December 2019 statement.
“Democratic state AG offices are taking on seasoned attorneys being paid by a radical liberal Democratic Presidential primary candidate,” he said before suggesting the special assistants “wield state police power” to lay the ground work for Bloomberg’s climate agenda.
CLW has exposed the Bloomberg Center’s work with AGs, including its recruiting, use of AGs’ GMail, and the 2019 decision to go dark about its relationships with activist AGs — upon finally encountering something other than media rose petals in its path — then its subsequent if quiet and rather limited admissions.
About those admissions, public record productions that have come to CLW’s attention lately include confirmation of several other unannounced “Special Assistant Attorneys General” in partner AG offices that apparently wanted Bloomberg’s underwriting for their activism/careers, but not necessarily in public. More on that in a bit, as well as on its backdoor channels to recruit more activist AGs to partake.
With the Bloomberg group’s patron now running for the White House, and several AGs in court fighting to keep details of their canoodling from the public, 2020 should see some long-overdue inquiry into the propriety of this unprecedented scheme.