RICO Climate Alarmists FOIA Emails Released
How the letter urging a RICO investigation of groups dissenting from the climate consensus was concocted
Remember the Gang of 20? A group of concerned academicians sent a letter to President Obama and Attorney-General Loretta Lynch urging that the government open up Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act investigation against groups that dissent from the consensus that man-made climate change is a big problem. As I noted earlier:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch has referred to the FBI the question as to whether people who question the scientific consensus about climate change should be prosecuted.
Lynch might have been acting on a request from George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla, who—with 19 others—wrote a letter urging the administration to follow the advice of Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) and go after "corporations and other organizations" by using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. As The Wall Street Journal has noted, RICO is an anti-mafia statute written to help "prosecute individuals tied to loansharking and murder-for-hire."
Speaking of rackets: Shukla is the founder and head of the Institute of Global Environment and Society. His wife is the business manager, and his daughter is the assistant to the president. The organization gets 98 percent of its funding from the government, and the Shuklas have reaped more than $5 million from it over the years.
In any case, a free market legal group, the Energy and Environment Legal Insitute have been pursuing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action seeking emails from the George Mason University faculty members who were the instigators of the notorious letter. Today those emails have been released. Below are couple for your weekend perusal.
First, GMU communications professor Ed Maibach and climatologist Jagadish Shukla were seeking help from various activist groups to get far more than 20 scientists to sign on. They approached the Union of Concerned Scientists who wrote back the following:
The White House Science Advisor John Holdren also wrote back:
For your weekend reading, see links to documents below:
http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160205_17490509.pdf
http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160205_17421987.pdf
http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160205_17394962.pdf
http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160205_17361082.pdf
http://eelegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/img20160223_13493972.pdf
I am still absorbing what the emails have to say, and will report on anything interesting.