Vermont FOIA smackdown - Climate Litigation Watch

Vermont FOIA smackdown

Either local counsel Brady Toensing and Chris Horner wrote supremely persuasive costs-and-fees briefs for each of three Vermont public records cases in which transparency prevailed, or the brazenness of the Vermont OAG’s stonewall of PRA requests for records records exposing its climate-RICO campaign greatly upset the court (surely some combination of the two is at play…).

Of course, the court’s umbrage became apparent during the proceedings, which produced memorable moments.  Some of these are reprised in the below editorial by a Vermont paper about the court having ruled last week against OAG in extraordinary fashion.

GAO board member Matt Hardin argued the underlying cases, and very well.

The court’s smackdown and intention to penalize is unmistakable, and something other stonewalling OAGs will note as the fight continues to pull back the curtain on their abusive campaign.

That campaign has been picked up by Michael Bloomberg, who is housing the successor to Eric Schneiderman and Bill Sorrell’s ‘climate-RICO’ campaign at a New York University operation he is underwriting.  One obvious objective was to provide the AGs privilege, hoping to avoid further embarrassing public records disclosures which doomed Schneiderman’s first coalition.  Any such effort to claim privilege merely seeks to shield an operation that clearly represents an effort to privatize law enforcement for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting politically selected parties.

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