On January 8, ExxonMobil filed a petition seeking pre-suit depositions of a number of municipal authorities who have sued that company, and many others, as well as green industry activists who were also involved in the Attorneys General Climate-RICO Scam uncovered by E&E Legal in 2016.

With the AG-RICO shakedown campaign all but shut down in large part due to most members fleeing after the exposure E&E Legal brought to the scandal, many of these same activists moved onto to working with other, ideologically aligned (if, the pleading shows, extraordinary confused or less than honest) municipalities in California seeking to achieve the same end. That end is the use of the courts to achieve a political agenda, the “climate” energy rationing agenda, which one of the parties named in this pleading previously admitted after their failure to win via the proper, democratic process (only to later deny that, when the scheming was exposed).

E&E Legal Senior Legal Fellow Chris Horner previously documented much of this behavior for Real Clear Energy. The petition heavily relies upon E&E Legal’s findings, and admissions by activist AGs in legal proceedings which E&E Legal brought.

As Forbes reports, the Exxon petition targets “those who orchestrated climate change lawsuits in California by asking the Tarrant County District Court to allow it to question an assortment of government officials and a Hagens Berman lawyer. The company says those local officials are talking out of both sides of their mouths – blaming Exxon for an impending flooding disaster while not disclosing that alleged threat to possible investors in their bond offerings.”

A key player in the current petition is Matt Pawa, who was infamous in the AG Climate-RICO suit as well.  As Forbes notes, Pawa is “a Hagens Berman attorney instrumental in creating a ‘playbook’ discussed at a conference in La Jolla, CA, and carried out by the AGs of New York and Massachusetts and the California local governments, Exxon says. He represents San Francisco and Oakland in their lawsuits.”

E&E Legal obtained the documents, or is the party in the actions, cited in the Exxon petition in footnotes 14, 57, 60, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 111, 112. Paragraphs 55 and 135 cite to developments in courtroom argument in which E&E Legal’s counsel elicited damning admissions.

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