Thirteen state GOP attorneys general have sent a letter to the Democratic AG's who are investigating ExxonMobile for fraud in climate change research, telling them that if minimizing the danger of climate change is fraud, so is exaggerating the peril. They threaten to prosecute climate alarmists for making spectacular claims of disaster that have not materialized.

Washington Times:

If Democratic attorneys general can pursue climate change skeptics for fraud, then also at risk of prosecution are climate alarmists whose predictions of global doom have failed to materialize.

The “cuts both ways” argument was among those raised by 13 Republican attorneys general in a letter urging their Democratic counterparts to stop using their law enforcement power against fossil fuel companies and others that challenge the climate change catastrophe narrative.

"Consider carefully the legal precedent and threat to free speech, said the state prosecutors in their letter this week, headed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

“If it is possible to minimize the risks of climate change, then the same goes for exaggeration,” said the letter. “If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.”

The letter comes as Exxon Mobil fights off subpoenas by two prosecutors — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker — for decades’ worth of climate-related documents and communications with academics, universities and free-market think tanks.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and California Attorney General Kamala Harris have also reportedly launched probes.

The 17 attorneys general — 16 Democrats and one independent — announced at a March 29 press conference that they had formed a coalition, AGs United for Clean Power.

“We think this effort by our colleagues to police the global warming debate through the power of the subpoena is a grave mistake,” said the letter.

The name of the coalition itself shows that the attorneys general “have taken the unusual step of aligning themselves with the competition of their investigative targets,” namely the solar and wind energy.

“If the focus is fraud, such alignment by law enforcement sends the dangerous signal that companies in certain segments of the energy market need not worry about their misrepresentations,” said the GOP letter.

Democrats have denied that the effort violates Exxon’s free-speech rights. Schneiderman spokesman Eric Soufer said in a statement that, “The law is clear: the First Amendment does not give any corporation the right to commit fraud.”

Think of how many global warming predictions over the last decade or so have been based on junk science or no science at all. The melting of the arctic ice cap by 2014 is my favorite. But the most important prediction that failed to come true is the failure of every single model that predicted a rise in temperature. Even the Intergovermmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees that there has been a pause in warming. The predictions about the rise in ocean levels has also been laughably wrong. 

If the AG's go through with their threat, their number one target should be Al Gore. He has not only been spectacularly wrong in many of his predictions, but he has also become fabulously wealthy by gaming the carbon trading system and capitalizing on his notoriety as the number one scaremonger in the world. I fantasize about putting him in an orange jumpsuit and making him do the perp walk in front of the cameras.

The GOP AG's point is sound. A scientific disagreement should not be criminalized. Nor should free speech be chilled by prosecuting people you disagree with. Their plea will fall on deaf ears, however, because of the billions of dollars that the Democrats are looking to extort from Exxon. 

Compared to that, free speech just doesn't matter.