Peatross decides: Judge pens halt to Cuccinelli inquest
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Peatross’ ruling leaves Cucinelli right to refile.HOOK GRAPHIC WITH DAN KACHUR PHOTO
The controversial “climategate” inquest by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli came to a halt Monday as an Albemarle County judge issued a declaration that set aside a demand for old emails from Michael Mann, the former UVA professor and creator of the so-called “hockey stick graph,” which posits that global temperatures are undergoing an unprecedented spike.
In a case that drew international attention, both sides spun the decision their way.
On the hot-button issue of whether such an inquest would have harmed academic freedom— something that was argued by four rights groups in an amicus brief— retired judge Paul Peatross seemed reluctant to carve out such a privilege.
“The Attorney General has the right to investigate if he meets the other requirements of the statute,” wrote Peatross, noting that he was preserving Cuccinelli’s right to refile a narrower inquest.
“I am pleased that the judge has agreed with my office on several key legal points,” Cuccinelli said in a prepared statement, “and has given us a framework for issuing a new civil investigative demand to get the information necessary to continue our investigation into whether or not fraud has been committed against the Commonwealth.”
Judge Peatross heard arguments from the two sides on Friday, August 20— the same day that a small protest of UVA professors and students took place on the steps of the Rotunda.
The Peatross ruling blistered the AG’s office on several points including the state’s failure to state precisely why it believes that old emails relate to a monetary fraud. Additionally, Peatross found that only one of the five grants Mann received at UVA actually consisted of state money, and so it didn’t meet the requirements of the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, or FATA, the 2003 Virginia law that gave the AG the right to his so-called Civil Investigative Demand.
Peatross also found that most of the grants preceded FATA, which was designed for frauds against the Commonwealth, but he left the door open to a refiling if the Attorney General can show that Virginia funds were paid during a time when FATA was in effect.
–story updated for print with UVA’s spin at 2:50pm, Tuesday, August 31
““I am pleased that the judge has agreed with my office on several key legal points,” Cuccinelli said in a prepared statement, “and has given us a framework for issuing a new civil investigative demand to get the information necessary to continue our investigation into whether or not fraud has been committed against the Commonwealth.”
As the Black Knight said in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”: “It’s only a flesh wound!”
He’ll be back with vengeance. In reading the decision I saw nothing that will stop Cuccinelli from winning this battle. The main point of the decision was that UVA is a State School and that Mann at the time was a State Employee and therefor the judge gave full authorization in his decision for the AG to investigate Mann and get the documents from UVA. All Peatross said was go dot your i’s and cross your t’s, see you again real soon.
Well, Arlen, according to the article the judge also appeared to say that about 90% of what Cucc asked for was irrelevant or outside of his jurisdiction.
On the one grant that came from Virginia did the AG’s office attach a copy of his request for the grant as an exhibit?. Seems like you would have to prove something fraudulent in his application but AG office wouldn’t even bother to attach a copy? Suppose the one application for a grant from Va. says I suspect humans are effecting global warming I would like 100K to prove it. Or I’m totally neutral on if humans effect global warming and I would like 100 K to objectively study it. You expect UVa to search for all these old emails but you won’t bother to attach a copy of the request for a grant in question?
I’m curious. Why is a retired judge issuing rulings at all? Is he not really retired? Is that normal in the courts? That just seems to me like something the conspiracy minded would get all freaky over.
cookiejar, it’s because our courts are overloaded with cases and Peatross has been asked by the court to pick up the slack.
Almost all of the other cases are legitimate. This one, clearly, is not.
gee Arlen, did you miss this tidbit:
Cuccinelli did not show, Peatross wrote, any evidence that Mann’s work was “misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
AWESOME:
“It is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests,” Mann said in an e-mail to The Daily Progress. “I’m looking forward now to trying to get back full time to the things I really care about: doing research and extending the forefront of our scientific understanding of the science of climate and climate change, advising students and postdoctoral scholars, and doing the best I can to communicate to the public important scientific findings”
The good guys win, the bad guys lose. The balls in Coochi-coochi-coo’s coo-coo court!
Cookiejar,
Peatross was substituting for a judge that was out on vacation, which is why he got this case even though he is retired.
Cucc is getting on my nerves.
@Arlen, I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say the judge gave the AG “full authorization in his decision for the AG to investigate Mann and get the documents from UVA.”
Having just read the declaration, I take away two important points:
1) 4 of the 5 grants were federal grants, and therefore the AG cannot investigate them (see section 5).
2) The 5th grant was a state grant, but apparently was granted in 2001. Therefore FATA (not enacted until 2003) does not apply and the AG cannot issue a CID under FATA for it (see section 6).
So sure, the AG “may investigate grants made with Commonwealth of Virginia funds to professors such as Dr. Mann.” (see the conclusion), but presumably not the 5 from his original CID. But what then does that leave him?
(on an unrelated side note, I think there’s a typo in the conclusion: “For the reasons stated above, this Court rules that the two CIDs in question SO not show a “reason to believe”…”). Pretty sloppy!
I like this part from Section 2:
“What the Attorney General suspects that Dr. Mann did that was false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth is simply not stated.”
Gee, the paranoid fringe continually claims that it’s so obvious from “Climategate” that Mann engaged in fraudulent research. And yet the judge said that Cucc couldn’t provide any evidence of fraud.
Or even produce an allegation of fraud.
Specia lSauce!!!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/8/21/152339/351
Why is Cucc wasting VA Taxpayer funds? Can we CID him? I’ll listen to his twist on climate after he goes to school for six years to become a climatologist and THEN spends another six years to study the climate. The only fraud that Cucc can claim is that Mann claimed he was gonna study big boobs but then used the money to study climate instead. I’ve no opinion on the climate either way, but he sounds like somebody screaming that the apple falls upward. Go away and leave us alone, like move to NKorea where you like their government style.
It’s amazing how many comment here without reading the actual ruling. Don’t take what you read as gospel, use your eyes and your brain. As one who works in the Justice System, I am appalled at the sheep.
Arlen, the actual ruling throws out 90% of Cucc’s demands. It rules that 4 of the 5 grants cannot be investigated by Cucc because they weren’t awarded by the state. It says that the remaining 2001 grant can only be investigated if funds were allocated after January 1, 2003. The judge also says that the Attorney General has to demonstrate a clear “reason to believe” on an objective basis that Mann committed fraud before an investigation can be authorized. The judge goes on to state that the Attorney General did not do this by failing to provide even a clear allegation of fraud, let alone any evidence of such an act.
Rather than calling other people sheep, you might want to enroll in remedial literacy classes.
a nice article that deserves to be refuted… if you can…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/global_warming_fraud_and_the_f.html
Scissorhands, what an insightful article. It starts out:
“The East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) revelations come as no real surprise to anyone who has closely followed the global-warming saga. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) thesis, to give it its semi-official name, is no stranger to fraud. It is no real exaggeration to state that it was fertilized with fraud, marinated in fraud, stewed in fraud, and at last served up to the world as prime, grade-A fraud with nice side orders of fakery and disingenuousness. Damning as they may be, the CRU e-mails are merely the climactic element in an exhaustively long line.”
Just by calling something a “fraud” doesn’t make it a fraud. If there was proof that Mann’s research was fraudulent, perhaps it would have been wise for Cuccinelli to show this evidence to the judge. Oops, that’s right - they didn’t have any evidence.
Ed, I don’t have the tolerance for cargo cult science to read the whole article, but this explains the first point:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/global-warming-debate-overheats-with-bad-numbers-170/
And to be honest, it really doesn’t matter particular year was the hottest in the US, but rather what the long-term trend is.
It also says that if you punched phone numbers from the phone book into his computer program they all came up as a hockey stick and Mann refuses to address the accusation.
Ed, can’t you do a cursory scan of the scientific literature?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5773/529b
The VS04 results have been interpreted to cast serious doubt on the MBH reconstruction. [Note that a newer method has since been presented and evaluated (8, 9).] However, these results are in large part dependent on a detrending step not used by MBH, which is physically inappropriate and statistically not required. The take-away message for the climate community should be strong encouragement for more vigorous cross-comparisons of the various reconstruction implementations, based on real-world proxy series, model emulations, and simulated modifications to real-world data. Such a step would help eliminate unnecessary confusion that can distract from the crucial contributions of climate change research to important scientific and policy questions.
@Arlen, a few of us obviously have read the ruling. That’s how we are able to refer to sections and quote from it.
You seem to think that it’s a victory of sorts for the AG and all he has to do is “go dot your i’s and cross your t’s.”.
Let’s see what those “i’s” and “t’s” are:
1) The four federal grants are outside the AG’s FATA jurisdiction. Scratch those off the list.
2) The one state grant was awarded 2 years before FATA, so it’s not subject to a FATA investigation (unless some of that money was awarded after 2003, which I suppose is a possibility, does anyone out there know?)
3) Even if the grants were actionable under FATA, Cuccinelli still needs to state plainly the suspected fraud by Dr. Mann, which the ruling finds he did NOT do.
4) Even if the grants were actionable AND he were able to state plainly what he thinks he’s looking for, the scope of requested documents, emails, etc in the original CID would be considerably more narrow and limited only to papers having to do with the grant application. (See section 6.) If memory serves, the CID asked for any emails (among other things) to/from/about 20-30 scientists over the course of several years.
So, I suppose besides all that, Cuccinelli has the green light to proceed.
Hey Arlen: the sheep are quite often appalled by the justice system.
Not, however, this time.
“I’m curious. Why is a retired judge issuing rulings at all? Is he not really retired? Is that normal in the courts? That just seems to me like something the conspiracy minded would get all freaky over.”
Peatross “retired” in 2006 after a series of complaints were filed against him, but he is actually hearing as many cases as ever as a substitute judge. He has too many friends in high places to have been forced out.
In my opinion, Cuccinelli is wasting our money and my time. He should resign today simply because he should feel so ashamed of himself, that he can’t bear to see his own miserable reflection in his own sorry mirror, and that revelation makes him so horribly depressed that it has rendered him unable to function adequately, or make an informed decision on any relevant issue in an important elected position, in my opinion.
Bjørn Lomborg has just been defriended by our attorney general.
“Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-u-turn