Last spring, the Daily Beast alerted us to a scandal within one of the most annoying denier groups, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, which existed to waste climate scientists time with burdensome FOIA fishing trips. The NYTimes built on that reporting over the summer, explaining how the two lawyers behind the group were suing each other for control of the group- and its cash.
Now, a pair of posts at DeSmogBlog offer a conclusion, convoluted as it is cloudy. It appears that the two parties- David Schnare on one side and Chris Horner on the other- have come to a settlement, whereby Schnare is basically surrendering some $630,000 that the group had in the bank.
In the first post, John Mashey dives into the financials, describing how Schnare was accused of essentially using the group’s funding (likely from coal and other fossil fuel sources) as his own personal piggy bank. Mashey’s description of the funding streams as “murky” is something of an understatement, as dark money is hard to track even when it’s not being shuffled back and forth between multiple organizations.
But in the end, Schnare’s settlement meant he turned over that money to Horner’s new group, the opaquely named Government Accountability and Oversight group, which appears to exist solely to spin up nefarious conspiracy theories about an NYU Law school program with state Attorneys General.
The second post by Graham Readfearn provides a bit more of the larger narrative surrounding the unusual case, where both sides claimed ownership of the law clinic, which was therefore suing itself. It appears as though Schnare made significant errors in setting up the group, which had no real board (despite claiming on its tax forms that it did and they met regularly) and behaved in such a way that when a new lawyer came on board, he was so concerned by Schnare’s setup that he reported the group to Virginia’s Attorney General and the IRS.
In response, Schnare steadfastly refused to turn over the group’s financial information, as well as his own, drawing into question what, exactly, he was hiding. Ultimately, though, he decided to simply give up the remaining money instead of fighting it in court, suggesting that whatever would be revealed by further litigation was worse than losing over a half-million dollars…
Unfortunately, though, Schnare hasn’t always been such a loser. One of the cases he’s been working on for years has been to force climate scientists involved in the Hockey Stick to turn over their emails (despite his own repeated refusal to do the same in this case, calling such requests burdensome and the like.)
Dr. Mann has his own post up on DeSmog, putting some of his emails soon-to-be-released messages into context, but as we wrote back in August, since some of them are old enough to vote, and the science has moved on since then so… who cares?
Well, Schnare probably cares, he’s been fighting over emails for years. But now who knows what he’ll do next, as he told Readfearn that the law clinic will be shutting down and its members (of which there are only a couple) will be retiring or moving on. Either way, its fitting to see that the man who harassed climate scientists with legal shenanigans got enSchnared by his own incompetence.
Top Climate and Clean Energy stories: