What Did MN AGO Know & When Did it Know it About Ties Between “SAAG” & Green Group Pushing AG Suit Against Private Parties? - Climate Litigation Watch

What Did MN AGO Know & When Did it Know it About Ties Between “SAAG” & Green Group Pushing AG Suit Against Private Parties?

Yesterday, CLW broke the news about the conflict inherent in the recent Minnesota Attorney General’s Office litigation against the American Petroleum Institute, et al. for various purported climate-related offenses. This conflict was found on the heels of an activist’s boast, the day the suit was filed, both of involvement in bringing about the suit and of intimate knowledge of AGO’s inner workings to develop the litigation — including details about the work of an attorney in AGO handling the case with whom, it turns out, the activist served and purportedly still serves (as of 9/15/20) on the advisory board of a climate activist group pushing this same agenda.

This raises all manner of disclosure and even disqualification questions, including about what the attorney told MN AGO before being placed there, by a Michael-Bloomberg funded group that provides privately hired attorneys to AGs who will pursue an agenda and specific cases of interest to that group.

CLW noted that the transparency group Energy Policy Advocates has filed a new Minnesota Government Data Practices Act request for information pertaining to, in short, what the AG’s Office knew about this relationship, and when it knew it.

Today, CLW cites several Requests for Admissions (RFAs) sent to MN AGO in EPA’s extant open records litigation against Keith Ellison’s Office pertinent to that suit and, now, to yesterday’s news and these newly emerged questions.

From discovery filed last week, EPA has asked the MN AGO the following, among other requests grounded in often remarkable facts of which EPA has learned:

These questions, EPA’s request and its two lawsuits to extract public information from an unwilling AGO are all relevant to what these attorneys general are doing, how they have chosen to go about doing it, and the lengths they have gone to to hide what these public offices are up to from the public