Democratic prosecutors in Hawaii filed an unexpected subpoena over the summer against the American Petroleum Institute (API), the nation's largest oil industry trade group, demanding a trove of climate change-related documents and correspondence with 225 entities, including media outlets, academic institutions, conservative advocacy groups, business trade groups, and public relations firms, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
The sprawling 55-page subpoena, which was filed in Hawaii circuit court in June, was served to API in Washington, D.C., two weeks later, according to court records reviewed by the Free Beacon. Further filings show that prosecutors deposed API's custodian of records in late July.
It is part of the high-stakes climate change lawsuit that the City and County of Honolulu filed in 2020 against some of the nation's largest oil companies, including Sunoco, BP America, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The sweeping lawsuit, which claims that Honolulu has been adversely affected by extreme weather, argues that the oil companies are responsible for these weather events and that they continued producing oil and gas for decades while allegedly being aware of the climate-related dangers of doing so. The lawsuit is part of a coordinated campaign—fueled by dark money and pursued by Democratic state and local prosecutors—to hold oil companies responsible for global warming. Dozens of Democratic-led states and cities have pursued identical litigation since Honolulu filed its lawsuit, which remains one of the farthest-along cases and is currently in discovery. If successful, the first-of-their-kind lawsuits could force oil companies to pay billions of dollars in damages, something experts warn could lead to higher energy prices.
Ryan Meyers, API's senior vice president and general counsel, declined to comment on the subpoena, but said the lawsuit is "part of a coordinated campaign against an industry that is vital to everyday life and serves as the engine of America's economy."
"Climate policy is a federal, not state issue," Meyers said in a statement to the Free Beacon.
The subpoena, which asks for records dating back more than 75 years, represents a significant escalation and opens a new front in the litigation—it appears to be the only such subpoena filed so far, but could tee up similar or even more wide-reaching subpoenas in the future. And it comes as the Supreme Court is slated to hear oral arguments on Monday in a similar case filed in Boulder County, Colo., which could chart the course for how Honolulu's case proceeds.
"For a lot of these cases, the process is the punishment," Mike Fragoso, a partner at the D.C. firm Torridon Law, said in an interview with the Free Beacon. "It is going into a new phase in this litigation where they are really doing violence to free speech."
"API is an advocacy organization—its job is to advocate for the interest of its members and global warming is a political issue," he continued. "There's lots of First Amendment implications to it. People disagree on it. What they're trying to do is basically set it up so that if you disagree on global warming, you're part of a conspiracy to defraud the people of Hawaii."
Among the groups implicated in the subpoena are the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the two outlets' brand studios, which produce original content for advertisers. Neither outlet responded to requests for comment.
In addition, it implicates dozens of major conservative think tanks and advocacy groups like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Center for Industrial Progress, Federalist Society, Hoover Institution, and Manhattan Institute, as well as libertarian-leaning groups, like the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation. Some establishment, left-of-center organizations that have ties to the oil industry—like the Aspen Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies—are also implicated.
The subpoena implicates various industry groups—including the Chamber of Commerce, American Coal Foundation, Edison Electric Institute, and Independent Petroleum Association of America—and academic institutions, like Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and Princeton University's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.
The subpoena requires API to produce all of its correspondence with the groups listed "relating to fossil fuel products, climate change topics, global warming, or the greenhouse effect."
It also requires API to produce a trove of internal documents and communications relating to climate change, certain climate-related studies conducted over the years, its finances, and its membership.
Since a federal court in Hawaii has allowed the lawsuit to proceed to discovery, API is required to comply unless they formally object, which can be more onerous than producing the documents.
"What it shows is that they're just throwing all this crap against the wall," said Steve Milloy, a prominent critic of mainstream climate science who founded the online blog Junk Science and previously led the group the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, both of which are listed in the subpoena.
Milloy and his organizations have long been targeted by climate activists and their supporters in the media. In 1998, the New York Times reported that Milloy's organization participated in meetings to craft a public relations strategy to counter global warming science. Milloy, who was present at one of the gatherings which he described as "pretty much a nothing meeting," said participants informally discussed a budget for a potential climate-related campaign to push back on attacks against fossil fuels, but that the meeting has since been mischaracterized.
"If you weren't there, you don't know what's going on," Milloy said. "It's really pathetic—none of this ever happened."
"They're, of course, alleging that the oil industry was somehow suppressing information," he added. "In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson had a whole government commission on climate. No one was suppressing anything."
An energy executive, who asked for anonymity because their company is involved in the litigation, didn't mince words when asked about the subpoena.
"Holy shit," the executive told the Free Beacon. "This kind of court system weaponization and targeting should terrify anyone who cares about free speech and the First Amendment."
