Democratic Rep. Paul Tonko of Amsterdam, the only New Yorker on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, described Wednesday’s hearing as “extremely disturbing”. The investigation has since escalated, with the GOP-led committee seeking jurisdiction over state inquiries into whether the supermajor misled the public about the impact of fossil fuels on the environment (see Daily GPI, June 22).
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“These subpoenas violate the separation of powers, exceed the committee’s delegated authority, abridge the First Amendment, and undermine fundamental principles of federalism”, the scholars said in a letter to Rep. Smith.
Smith lamented that the “refusal of the AGs should trouble everyone sitting on this dais, every American”.
Allowing subpoenaed parties to ignore compliance based on the politics of the subject sets a risky precedent.
The subpoenas aren’t a partisan political effort, but rather are “institutional”, the chairman said. The investigations followed media reports that the company had funded its own climate research in the 1970s and ’80s-and that research made it clear that climate change was real and unsafe. If this is the case, it would be the responsibility of the Committee to change existing law and possibly appropriate additional funds to even out any such imbalances caused as a result. In lieu of cooperation, these recipients have provided a myriad of spurious legal arguments.
“As we will hear today, the committee does have the power to subpoena, ” he said Wednesday, adding that the issue “isn’t partisan, it’s constitutional”.
Since the subpoenas were issued in July, Schneiderman and Healey have both refused to obey the subpoenas and have gotten plenty of support from the legal community that says Smith and company didn’t have the right to issue them. That, he said, sets a “dangerous precedent”.
“In my own mind, I have to go back to the Red Scares of the 50s to recall a similar effort”, she said.
Subpoenas directed at such groups as the Union of Concerned Scientists are “invalid” and “constitutionally impermissible”, the nine constitutional scholars told the committee.
Law professor Ronald Rotunda is affiliated with the Cato Institute, which received $125,000 from ExxonMobil between 1991 and 2006.
According to the four-page joint stipulation of dismissal document filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, parties mutually agreed that Walker would withdraw his subpoena and ExxonMobil will stipulate to the dismissal without prejudice of the action. “Legislative authority means nothing if committees cannot investigate”, he told the committee.
The question of congressional authority has been a matter of great debate. In short, is human causation of global warming an indisputable scientific fact?
A power struggle between a key House Republican and NY state’s attorney general over the issue of climate change was center stage at a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday.
Some Democrats say Scheiderman’s investigation is analogous to the action that state attorneys general took against tobacco companies in the 1990s to prove their marketing practices hid the dangers of smoking.
“No house committee has ever tried or should ever try to enforce subpoenas against state attorneys general”, Charles Tiefer, former acting general counsel of the House and now a law professor at the University of Baltimore, testified to the committee Wednesday.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the Supreme Court had upheld congressional committees’ subpoena authority.
Schneiderman’s office launched an investigation previous year into whether ExxonMobil misled the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change. “It is simply bogus”.
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In a Monday letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), climate change denier and chair of the House Science Committee, several constitutional experts argued that the committee should not have issued subpoenas to environmental groups as part of its probe into state investigations of Exxon.
