Charge Big Oil with conspiracy, former tobacco prosecutor says
Following the release of new internal documents, Sharon Eubanks told the Senate Budget Committee that there is evidence for a DOJ climate case against Big Oil.
A former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who prosecuted and won the massive racketeering case against Big Tobacco said she believes the DOJ now has enough evidence to pursue a conspiracy case against Big Oil.
Sharon Eubanks, who now runs her own law firm, made the comments in response to questioning by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at today’s Senate Budget Committee’s hearing on fossil fuel industry disinformation. The hearing was called as a complement to the boatload of new internal oil industry documents released yesterday.
“If a large corporation knowingly produces a product that gets me sick or kills me,” said Sanders, “what are the legal grounds that we can hold them accountable for?”
“The federal government [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization] statute, of course, has provisions that we used in the tobacco litigation,” Eubanks said. “Conspiracy is a good claim to look at” at the state level, she added.
“If you were Attorney General of the United States, would you proceed in that direction?” Sanders asked.
“I would, yes. No question,” said Eubanks.
Eubanks made the same arguments in 2021, when she testified before the House Oversight Committee that the fossil fuel industry should be held legally accountable for climate denial and delay. But on Tuesday, Senate Democrats released hundreds of new internal documents obtained by subpoenas issued to Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Chamber of Commerce.
Democrats argued today that the previously unseen documents bolster the case for federal legal action against major oil and gas companies, whose executives knew their products would cause catastrophic global warming as early as 1959.
“After seeing the findings of our investigation, I’m convinced that a society-wide challenge will be necessary for us to hold Big Oil accountable for profiting for decades from carbon-fueled climate change,” said Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House Oversight Committee’s investigation and testified at today’s hearing.
After confirming that Eubanks would pursue a conspiracy case were she attorney general, Sanders asked her why current Attorney General Merrick Garland wasn’t pursuing an investigation. Eubanks, perhaps understandably, pivoted. “It’s probably not really appropriate for me to comment on that.”
But if a federal lawsuit against Big Oil were pursued, Eubanks emphasized, the goal wouldn’t necessarily revolve around forcing companies to pay millions in damages.
“Money’s great, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But getting a company to change the way it did business—that’s what we got out of tobacco.”
Eubanks also said in her testimony that the government’s successful case against the tobacco industry could be used as a foundation for building a case against fossil fuel companies. The tobacco industry’s illegal practices reveal “striking similarities” to the behavior of the petroleum industry, she said.
“There exists solid evidentiary basis to move forward with a request to the Department of Justice to investigate the actions of the fossil fuel industry,” she said. “Just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering complaint against the industry, given the similarities of the fraudulent acts, and the government’s successful case against tobacco, there is adequate foundation for building a case.”
She also noted that, absent a federal government lawsuit, legal action is already being taken worldwide: “More than 1,800 lawsuits have been filed regarding climate liability worldwide,” she said. “We should not waste any more time wringing our hands about what can be done.”
You can find the full hearing, and all of the witnesses’ testimonies, here.
Further takes on today’s hearing:
A hill I will die on, and have died on many times: Big Oil is not "copying Big Tobacco's playbook." Big Oil is using the playbook Big PR crafted 100+ years ago for every industry that relies on polluting and/or extracting from the commons with impunity to remain profitable.
Natural gas, [Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin] said, “isn’t green and it isn’t clean.” Indeed, explained Whitehouse, the industry’s master plan is to “disguise natural gas as renewable, to lock their fossil fuels into our energy future.”
This is an incredibly important point for senior Democrats to be making, because natural gas has always been the Democratic vice. Coal was obviously filthy, but natural gas, when you burn it, produces half as much carbon. Therefore it became the Democratic pathway to reducing emissions while not really offending the fossil fuel industry. Go back and look at Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses—nearly every one contains a paean to the rise of fracked gas.”
But budget committee Republicans pushed back on the very premise of the hearing. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator and the committee’s top Republican, said it is “undeniable that … fossil fuels are critical to our energy security”.
Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, meanwhile, claimed that CO2 is a “plant food”, implying it has positive aspects. It’s a talking point that has long been promoted by fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks that aim to sow doubt about climate change.
“I’m not a climate-change denier, I’m just not a climate-change alarmist,” Johnson added.
Catch of the day: Today we have a double feature: Whiskers (left) and Shinx (right). Reader Anne said they don't particularly like each other, but they do both like stalking the squirrels and pigeons that hang out in her garden. They're also excellent hunters of the local insect wildlife.
Want to see your furry (or non-furry!) friend in HEATED? It might take a little while, but we WILL get to yours eventually! Just send a picture and some words to catchoftheday@heated.world.
Great article, Arielle.
Your reader Anne's cats are cute, but I am more than a little alarmed at their hunting prowess of which she boasts. Please ask her to bell them up or keep them indoors! The climate emergency and the biodiversity crisis (and insect apocalypse, now that we're using appropriately strong language) are multiple symptoms of the same crisis, and we biodiversity scientists have been increasingly involved in research definitively showing, with kittycams and GPS trackers, the impact of domestic cats runs into literally hundreds of millions, possibly billions of birds, mice, shrews, geckoes, lizards, dragonflies, and other creatures - every year. In one study of which I was a part, a single city (Cape Town, South Africa) was conservatively estimated to lose around 12m creatures a year to domestic cats. This ain't som'tin cute. It's an almost unmitigated disaster for our natural world. Even my puppy wears bells whenever he goes outside, to give squirrels and songbirds advance warning.
The central component of both tobacco and oil is profit: "We know this is killing you/the planet, but damn - look at all the money we're making! Consequently, we'll lie, cheat, steal, divert, distract, and whatever else we can do so we can continue to earn our profits!" And America cheers.
Many of us blame capitalism; I submit it runs much deeper than that. When a society conflates wealth with virtue, as ours does, we make the accumulation of wealth an ethical endeavor. This, in turn, treats the most deviant methods used to procure wealth as principled behavior, and more significantly, attaches negative values to anything that curtails this accumulation of wealth. Thus a 14 year old girl who feels strongly about maintaining the earth's health is pilloried by vast swaths of society and efforts to combat the proven, devastating effects of climate change are labeled alarmist and foolish.
And, of course, this same culture holds the individuals who participated in this massive, self serving deception as paragons of civilized society. They not only enjoy the ill-gotten wealth their duplicity has obtained, but they are also treated with a much higher level of respect and admiration than those of us who attempt to live by genuine moral principles.
Indeed, stepping for a moment outside the question of climate change, perhaps the most obviously immoral and duplicitous public figure to come along in decades was recently elevated to the position of chief executive of our nation - and may very well replicate that feat. Because after all, God must favor and endorse anyone who can afford to be flown around in a private airplane with his name emblazoned on the side and gold faucets in the bathrooms inside, right? I mean, just think of all the hard work and energy it took to earn all that cash!