Press Release  AG Healey Urges Congressional Committee to Withdraw Its Unprecedented Subpoena Seeking to Derail Exxon Investigation

BOSTON — Attorney General Maura Healey today urged Chairman Lamar Smith to withdraw his Congressional committee’s unprecedented and unlawful subpoena for documents relating to her office’s ongoing investigation into Exxon Mobil.

In her 10-page letter sent to Smith today, AG Healey reiterates that Smith and the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology have no authority over her office’s investigation into whether Exxon Mobil misled Massachusetts consumers and investors about the impact of burning fossil fuels on the environment and the impact of climate change on the company’s business. Smith, who himself has received significant campaign contributions from Exxon Mobil, is using his platform as the chairman of the committee to engage in improper attempts to derail AG Healey’s valid investigation.  The letter also points out that no Congressional committee in the history of the nation ever has subpoenaed a sitting state Attorney General. 

“No matter how the Committee tries to disguise its investigation or how broadly it seeks to construe its jurisdiction, it simply has no oversight authority over what is really at issue here – a legitimate state law enforcement effort to investigate securities, businesses and consumer fraud,” the letter reads.

Since AG Healey launched her investigation in April 2016, Exxon has refused to provide any documents to her  and instead sued AG Healey in Texas federal district Court and Massachusetts state court. In January 2017, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Heidi E. Brieger denied Exxon Mobil’s motion to set aside AG Healey’s CID and ordered the company to comply with the investigation.

Today’s letter states that by issuing the subpoena after a Massachusetts Superior Court affirmed AG Healey’s authority to investigate Exxon,  the Committee is “essentially demanding that the state’s chief law enforcement official turn over documents related to an ongoing law enforcement investigation that she has a duty to conduct under Massachusetts law and that has been explicitly upheld by a Massachusetts state court. This is a blatant intrusion of state sovereignty and flagrant disregard for prosecutorial independence.”

Smith’s subpoena not only requests privileged and protected documents relating to AG Healey’s investigation into Exxon Mobil but also privileged materials related to the Clean Power Plan, which places nationwide limits on climate change-causing emissions from fossil-fuel burning power plants.

President Barack Obama announced the Clean Power Plan in August 2015. After final regulations to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from existing power plants were issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a group of state and industry petitioners challenged the Clean Power Plan in federal court, which has yet to issue a decision. AG Healey is a part of a coalition of attorneys general involved in defending the Clean Power Plan. In February 2016 Smith and other members of Congress filed an amicus brief in support of dismantling the Plan.

AG Healey’s letter to Smith asserts that it is also inappropriate for him to be using a Congressional committee subpoena in an effort to obtain privileged materials from her office regarding   the Clean Power Plan litigation in which he has taken a formal position on the opposing side.

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