Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide asked a billionaire donor to enlist a leading environmental activist to stage protests against a Harvard legal scholar arguing against environmental regulations in court, hacked emails show.
In a March 2015 email to environmentalist and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta asked him to solicit the help of radical environmentalist Bill McKibben to organize protests at Harvard.
Podesta hoped to target Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who was representing coal company Peabody Energy in federal litigation challenging Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon emissions from power plants.
"Can you get your pall McKibben to organize Harvard student protests against him," Podesta wrote. "I'm all for academic freedom when it's not bought and paid for by Peabody Coal. "
"Will try. On it," Steyer replied.
The email exchange was among thousands hacked from Podesta’s personal email account and released by the group Wikileaks. The U.S. government believes the hack was one of several coordinated by the Russian government to influence the U.S. presidential election.
In an emailed statement, Tribe, a liberal legal scholar whose students have included a young Barack Obama, pushed back against Podesta’s suggestion that he had taken a position against EPA regulations at the behest of Peabody Coal.
"I have long liked John Podesta (and am working hard for Hillary Clinton's election) but I strongly disagree with John's supposed reaction to my role in challenging the legality and constitutionality of the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which I doubted before agreeing to represent the Plan's industry opponents," he wrote.
"I don't modify my academic views when I take on a client, either pro bono or for a fee," Tribe said. "Apparently, the Supreme Court shared my doubts when it took the unprecedented step of putting the Clean Power Plan on hold pending the final decision on its legality."
McKibben, the president of environmental group 350.org, said in an email that he did not recall Steyer asking him to organize protests against Tribe. "Not that I remember, and I think I would," he wrote.
McKibben did lead environmental protests at Harvard a few weeks after Podesta and Steyer’s email exchange, but those protests called on the school’s administration to divest its $35 billion endowment from fossil fuel companies. The protests did not single out Tribe, according to a report in the Harvard Crimson.
The protests occurred as Tribe delivered oral arguments in federal court on behalf of Peabody’s challenge to EPA power plant regulations. His work on behalf of the now-bankrupt coal company angered many environmentalists and members of the Obama administration.
Steyer did not return a request for comment.
Additional hacked emails show that Podesta used McKibben on other occasions to push back against legal challenges to EPA regulations.
When Daily Beast reporter Eleanor Clift asked about Tribe’s opposition to those regulations, Podesta replied, "I'm in China. Try Bill McKibben." That email came a little more than a week after his exchange with Steyer.