Climate activists are calling out presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) for saying on national television that she had sued ExxonMobil. At last night’s CNN climate forum, in the midst of pandering to climate activists, Sen. Harris falsely claimed she had sued ExxonMobil. But the climate activists that had pushed her to do just that were the quickest to call her out on her lie – oops!
Sen. Harris was pontificating about how badly she wants to sue energy companies and “take away that money” when moderator Erin Burnett asked, “So Senator Harris, what would you do? Would you sue them, sue ExxonMobil?”
“Yes,” Sen. Harris responded. “I have sued ExxonMobil!”
For the record, Harris never sued ExxonMobil. Several biased media outlets said she did when she served as California’s Attorney General, because they were trying to make it seem like there was momentum in the #ExxonKnew campaign, but she never did. Her successor, Xavier Becerra, has also declined to open an investigation, even when he was threatened by a primary challenger who campaigned on the issue.
Of course, you don’t have to take our word for it. Several disappointed activists weighed in to correct the record in real time.
Harris did sue oil companies during her Cal AG job. She just never did anything with an open file re the big enchilada — #ExxonKnew. #ClimateTownHall
— RL Miller (@RL_Miller) September 4, 2019
Whatever it is that might have been said in the climate #debate, having worked in California on the #ExxonKnew campaign I can say that neither @KamalaHarris or @AGBecerra have done anything to legally hold @exxonmobil accountable. Rather, they resisted calls to prosecute.
— Gary Graham Hughes (@VozSilvestre) September 4, 2019
It goes without saying that even if she had investigated ExxonMobil, she would have been hard pressed to find anything to prosecute them over. The original #ExxonKnew reporting has been thoroughly debunked by editorial boards, legal scholars, and us. The coalition of “AGs United For Clean Power,” which Harris was party to, fell apart almost as soon as it was formed.
Only New York ever actually filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil after digging through over four million pages of the company’s internal documents, and its lawsuit is based on a misunderstanding of the company’s accounting methods. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission looked into the same allegations against ExxonMobil and ultimately dropped its investigation.
In addition to disappointing climate activists, Harris is also unlikely to gain the support of any American who supports affordable, reliable, clean-burning energy. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said at the CNN forum, adding that she’s “prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.”
Last night was a big misstep for Sen. Harris, who was hoping to revitalize her campaign by talking tough on climate. But by rewriting her resume to paste over a major sore point for activists, she managed to alienate that constituency as well as all those who oppose misguided lawsuits against energy producers.
