The U.S. House Oversight Committee wasn’t the only major governmental entity to bring up ye olde “victory will be achieved” leaked memo set within the last few weeks as a “smoking gun” piece of evidence to indict the fossil fuel industry of conspiring with skeptic climate scientists to spread disinformation undercutting the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. Just two days before that Committee sent out its September 16th intimidation letters to energy company officials, which prominently quoted the “victory” memos, Vermont’s Attorney General Thomas Donovan Jr filed his Vermont v. ExxonMobil lawsuit on September 14th, which featured that memo set’s notorious phrase on page 28.
AG Donovan’s same day press release succinctly summarized his lawsuit:
The lawsuit alleges past and ongoing violations of Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act for concealing crucial information and disseminating misleading statements and advertising about fossil fuels and climate change …
“Vermont consumers were given false and misleading information about the dramatic effects of these products on the climate. Vermonters have a right to accurate information in order to make informed decisions about the products they purchase.”
The gift AG Donovan hands on a silver platter to the energy companies is how those last two bits could be turned 180° away from the fossil fuel industry and aimed instead at the enviro-activist global warming industry, emphasizing how AG Donovan apparently didn’t undertake elemental due diligence on whether his cornerstone evidence had any validity, and emphasizing how the mainstream media’s abject failure to ask tough questions about the origins of that ‘evidence’ and the core clique of people surrounding it has ultimately led to AG Donovan possibly relying on that core clique for the “smoking gun evidence” in his lawsuit. Continue reading