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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Allegedly Used Email Alias As Exxon CEO (arstechnica.com)
According to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Rex Tillerson used an email alias of "Wayne Tracker" to communicate with other Exxon executives about climate change while serving as CEO of Exxon Mobil. "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been leading an investigation of Exxon Mobil centered on whether the company misled investors by publicly arguing against the reality of climate change even though its executives knew the science was accurate," reports Ars Technica. "The investigation was triggered by news reports describing climate research the company undertook in the 1970s and 1980s, which affirmed the work of other climate scientists and showed that greenhouse gas emissions were causing climate change. Exxon buried that work and spent the next couple decades claiming that the science was unclear, although it has recently publicly acknowledged reality." From the report: The e-mails that were provided allowed the attorney general to figure out that Tillerson used the account between 2008 and 2015 at least, but it didn't appear on Exxon's list of accounts for which records were preserved. The letter also mentions 34 other e-mail accounts "specifically assigned to top executives, board members, or assistants" that the attorney general thinks should have been included. In a statement, an Exxon spokesperson explained, "The e-mail address, Wayne.Tracker@exxonmobil.com, is part of the company's e-mail system and was put in place for secure and expedited communications between select senior company officials and the former chairman for a broad range of business-related topics." The Office of the Attorney General's letter claims that "Exxon has continuously delayed and obstructed the production of documents from its top executives and board members, which are crucial to OAG's investigation into Exxon's touted risk-management practices regarding climate change."
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Wow this story has:
AGW? check
Trump? check.
EMAILS!? check.
Which means I need:
popcorn? popcorn? Not check?!? No popcorn! Sad.
Someone had to do it.
it could not, a company is not animate. People do things on behalf of the company. Thus it is people who misled investors, etc.
The difference is important because all too often they will let the company/corporation pick up the blame for what they did and pay any fines. Until executives start losing their homes and pensions their behaviour will not change, we will continue to see scandals such as this. I am not talking about making executives paying for mistakes, even bad ones, but for deliberate lies/... such as this.
But there IS a law about not informing investors of potential liability issues, which is the actual issue the AG's are investigating. No ones 'opinions' are being criminalized. The active efforts to evade the law is, however.
Sorry to rain facts on your strawman parade of butthurt.
Moron.... private company != Government
I can create all the email account I want for my company ... the Government has no constitutional power to complain.
The witch hunt to file some sort of criminal complaint because I dare to talk about climate change or deny climate change.. is simply that.
The problem isn't that he used a secret email address.
The problem is that he used that secret email address to hide communications.
Those communications were allegedly about a scheme to mislead the public (and investors) about the state of climate science.
Misleading investors with information you know to be false is a bad thing because it causes them to make investments based on your lies, if those emails show that Tillerson knew he was lying it could be a very bad thing.
I stole this Sig
Moron.... private company != Government
I can create all the email account I want for my company ... the Government has no constitutional power to complain.
The witch hunt to file some sort of criminal complaint because I dare to talk about climate change or deny climate change.. is simply that.
Except that Exxon Mobil is not a private company. Its stock is sold in various currencies on numerous exchanges around the world.
The executives of a publicly-traded company have a legal fiduciary responsibility to inform shareholders of potential risks to the company's profitability. Trying to bury their own evidence that their products contribute to climate change arguably is a violation of that responsibility. Hence the investigation by the AGs.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
So every company needs to officially warn their investors about global warming, rising tides, and ocean acidification?
If those things can materially affect the profitability of the company, then yes. And especially if the company knows that it is contributing to them, thus making itself vulnerable to legislative or liability consequences.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Sorry for posting AC, but I wanted to create a good run-on sentence that would not be attributed to myself.
If you, as a company, are aware that Global Climate Change is a significant problem that could impact your business and you have done the research that proves it, then YES, lying to the shareholders about it is a crime.
It's not the crime, it's the coverup. This is the kind of crap that gets people sent to jail.
It's not about the science, it's about what Exxon did:
If their internal research showed one thing, but they publicly declared something something opposite, that's pretty bad, but probably not criminal.
If they testified in a court that they believed the opposite factoids, and didn't mention the internal research, that's really bad, but if the opposing lawyers didn't find the right person to testify (like someone at Exxon who knew about the research,) they are probably still ok.
If they set up secret email accounts for senior executives, and then didn't provide the emails from those accounts to the opposing lawyers during the discovery process, then that's just fraud on the court. It's like your wife "forgetting" to mention her secret bank account in the Cayman Islands during your divorce trial. Seriously, WTF?
And tell me that Exxon's $175 million 'put into trust for Tillerson', isn't really a payoff to leverage his position in government.
I'm sure we should just turn a blind eye to this, except Exxon's major investments are in Siberian oil fields and so *it* has to be Putin's bitch, which means Tillerson has to be Putin's bitch too.
But hey, sell your country out for your own interests Tillerson.
If a small company was being investigated and their emails were significant to the crime, then there would be no problem with grabbing everything despite the damage that it would do to the small firm. Yet when a big firm is being investigated, they are free to hand over what they feel like. A similar problem was visible when News International was done in the UK over its phone hacking behaviour. A little less subtly from prosecutors would be welcome!