Pelosi’s Saturday Night Call over Russia Hacked Ploys

Posted on August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Seems there is some talking point being launched that whatever Russia did do with regard to hacking the Democrats…watch out because the actual text could be altered and false…seems Politico is carrying the water for that talking point as well.

Admittedly, Russia does publish false propaganda for sure and the use of Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik News are the go to methods…but in this case….does Russia need to do this? Okay, read on as the Democrats are in fear and setting the table to promote an early new warning.

Democrats’ new warning: Leaks could include Russian lies

Photo: CBS

The move could help inoculate Hillary Clinton against an October cyber surprise.

Politico: Democratic leaders are putting out a warning that could help inoculate Hillary Clinton against an October cyber surprise: Any future mass leaks of embarrassing party emails might contain fake information inserted by Russian hackers.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is among those sounding that alarm, echoing security experts who say Russian security services have been known to doctor documents and images or bury fictitious, damaging details amid genuine information. For hackers to resort to such tactics would be highly unusual, but security specialists say it’s a realistic extension of Moscow’s robust information warfare efforts.

Pelosi aired her concerns during a Saturday night conference call with Democratic lawmakers and aides who had been stung by a dump of their emails and phone numbers, according to a source on the call.

Democratic strategists say the party would be wise to trumpet warnings about faked leaks as it braces for the possibility of hackers releasing damaging information about Clinton or other candidates close to Election Day. Preemptively casting doubt on the leaks may be easier now than trying to mount a full response days before voters go to the polls.

“It is certainly a valid issue to raise, because clearly the people who are doing these attacks have a political agenda that’s against the Democratic Party,” said Anita Dunn, who was White House communications director in the early part of President Barack Obama’s first term.

If Russia is indeed attempting to destabilize Clinton’s candidacy through the widespread digital assault on Democratic institutions — as many researchers believe, and Democrats are alleging, but Moscow strongly denies — “why wouldn’t you want to raise the potential [for tampering]?” asked Dunn, now a partner at communications firm SKDKnickerbocker. “I think it’s only prudent for people to raise that possibility.”

Republicans say Democrats are just trying to distract the public from the most important issue: the content of the leaks. They say the Democrats already tried to do that with the first batch of 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails that leaked in July, which forced the resignation of Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz after showing that some DNC staffers had favored Clinton over primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“First, they made it all about Russia instead of the substance of what was actually in the emails,” said Matt Mackowiak, a veteran Republican strategist. Now, he added, “If there is a massive trove of emails or documents relating to the Clinton campaign or the Clinton Foundation … they may just say, ‘Look, the authenticity of the emails hasn’t been confirmed.’”

Intelligence officials — including NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — have long argued that data manipulation more broadly is a disturbing possibility, and potentially the next front in both cybercrime and the budding digital warfare between countries.

Last month, a bipartisan group of 32 national security experts at the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group warned of a specific type of fakery following the DNC hack, arguing that the suspected Russian hackers who struck the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee could “salt the files they release with plausible forgeries.”

In Saturday’s call, Pelosi was underlining a point made by cyber experts at CrowdStrike, the firm the party has hired to investigate the breaches at the DNC and the DCCC. The conference call was prompted by the late Friday release of DCCC spreadsheets containing nearly all House Democrats’ and staffers’ personal emails and phone numbers, which led to a flood of harassing emails and phone calls over the weekend.

In total, the hackers have reportedly infiltrated more than 100 party officials and groups, leaving progressives fearful that the entire Democratic Party apparatus is potentially compromised. During Saturday’s call, House members in competitive races voiced concerns about what damning information might be out there.

But hacking specialists say the most harmful information might not even be genuine.

“You may have material that’s 95 percent authentic, but 5 percent is modified, and you’ll never actually be able to prove a negative, that you never wrote what’s in that material,” CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch told POLITICO. “Even if you released the original email, how will you prove that it’s not doctored? It’s sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Several Democratic operatives said they even expect fake information, though mixed with enough truth to cause damage.

“The most powerful lie contains truth,” said Craig Varoga, a D.C.-based Democratic strategist. “Whether it’s the devil or it’s Russian intelligence services, they traffic in things that are true in order to put across a greater lie.”

Historically, it’s not unprecedented for intelligence agencies — including those in the U.S. — to release fake reports for propaganda purposes. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program infamously used forged documents and false news reports to discredit or harass dissenters during the 1950s and 1960s, including civil rights leaders, anti-war protesters and alleged communist organizations.

Hackers have adopted similar strategies.

In 2013, Syrian hackers backing embattled President Bashar Assad hijacked The Associated Press’ Twitter account, tweeting out falsified reports of two explosions at the White House that had injured Obama. The Dow plummeted in minutes, wiping out $136 billion in market value, according to Bloomberg. It stabilized shortly thereafter, once the report was revealed to be a hoax.

Russia has long been known for engaging in such propaganda warfare, going back to the days of the Soviet Union, when the KGB spread conspiracy theories about the FBI and CIA’s involvement in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In the 1980s, the KGB planted newspaper articles alleging that the U.S. had invented HIV during a biological weapons research project.

The security agency also secretly helped an East German journalist write a book, “Who’s Who in the CIA,” that accurately outed numerous undercover CIA agents but also intentionally included a raft of people who were simply American officials stationed overseas, according to a former top Soviet security official.

In the weeks since the DNC email leaks, cyber specialists on Twitter have been circulating a passage from the memoirs of a former East German spymaster who wrote about the “creative” use of forgeries in conjunction with genuine leaks.

“Embarrassed by the publication of genuine but suppressed information, the targets were badly placed to defend themselves against the other, more damaging accusations that had been invented,” wrote Markus Wolf, who had headed East Germany’s foreign intelligence division for more than three decades. (On the other hand, he added that, “my principle was to stick as close to the truth as possible, especially when there was so much of it that could easily further the department’s aims.”)

In recent years, the Kremlin has adapted these tactics for a digital age.

The Kremlin was caught in 2014 manipulating satellite images to produce “proof” that Ukraine had shot down the Malaysia Airlines flight that was downed over Ukraine, killing 298 passengers. Last year, a Russian lawmaker’s staffer was exposed filming a fake war report, pretending to be near the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has seized territory.

“Standard Russian modus operandi,” said James Lewis, an international cyber policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, via email. “They’ve done it before in the Baltics and other parts of Europe: Leak a lot of real data and slip in some fakes (or more often, things that have been subtly modified rather than a complete fake).”

Digital forensics experts even noted that the metadata on some of the early documents leaked from the DNC — which included opposition research files — had been altered, although it didn’t appear that any content was compromised. But the discovery showed how easy such an edit would be.

“They have information warfare as a core tenet of what they do form a geopolitical perspective,” said Steve Ward, director of communications for digital security firm FireEye, which tracks many Russian hacking groups. “It’s really in their wheelhouse.”

But Ward and other digital security experts acknowledge that the exact scenario Pelosi was discussing would be novel, and that so far, hackers have had little incentive to manipulate leaked data. As anonymous digital actors, hackers already have the deck stacked against them when trying to expose information.

“You’ve got to suspend disbelief and trust the bad guys when you’re looking at this stuff,” Ward said. If they make just one discredited leak, hackers are “effectively losing the value of the operation by creating distrust with the data,” he added.

This leads many cyber experts to suspect that any release of faked emails, if it comes at all, would probably not come until days before the Nov. 8 election. At that point, the Democrats wouldn’t have time to definitively prove a forgery.

So it makes sense, strategists said, for Democrats to put the concept in the public’s mind now.

“What Pelosi is doing is making the response now,” said Brad Bannon, a longtime Democratic consultant. “Democrats do have their antenna up over this thing. They are anticipating.”

Eric Geller, Martin Matishak and Heather Caygle contributed to this report.

Deportation is Almost at a Full Halt

Posted on August 22, 2016August 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Interior Enforcement Plummeting Under Obama Admin’s New Deportation Program

DailyCaller: The Obama administration’s new program to work with local and state law enforcement on deportations has resulted in a dramatic decrease in interior immigration enforcement, government data reveals.

Detainer requests to local and state law enforcement are down across the board for aliens who have committed violent, drug, and sex crimes. The data comes from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse which obtains government statistics through Freedom of Information Act requests. A detainer request is when Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) asks a state or local jail agency to hold an alien in custody so ICE is able to take them into custody.

ICE shifted from the Secure Communities program to the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP) in the beginning of Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. In FY 2014, ICE had 159,210 requests to local and state law enforcement agencies to detain non-citizens for up to 48 hours. That number dropped 41.3 percent to 95,085 in FY 2015.

The purpose of the PEP is to focus on deportations of aliens who have committed serious “Level 1 offenses.” But, comparing FY 2014 and FY2015, data shows a decrease in detainer requests for aliens who have been convicted of assault, driving under the influence, selling cocaine, robbery, and sexual assault. The amount of detainer requests for aliens convicted of murder dropped from 603 to 343, a 43.2 percent drop.

At the same time as detainer requests have decreased, ICE “notices” have increased. With the announcement of the PEP, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said that ICE is phasing out detainer requests and instead using requests for notifications. These are “requests that state or local law enforcement notify ICE of a pending release during the time that person is otherwise in custody under state or local authority.” (RELATED: ICE Gets Extra Billion To Deport Illegals, Deports 200,000 FEWER)

While notices were supposed to replace detainers, ICE continues to use the latter. In November 2015, a year after PEP was put in place, ICE had 4,942 detainer requests and 1,204 requests for notice.
With the new program in place ICE’s total requests for detainers and requests for notices have plummeted. In October 2014, the last month of the prior Secure Communities program, there were 11,201 detainers. A year later there were 6,146 detainers and requests for notice combined in October.

Detainer requests during the Obama administration peaked with 309,697 in 2011. That same year there were about 225,000 interior deportations. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, ICE is on pace to complete 63,700 interior deportations in 2016.

**** Remember this past June and the Supreme Court decision:

ABAJournal: The U.S. Supreme Court has split 4-4 in a challenge to President Barack Obama’s power to implement a deferred deportation program, leaving in place a nationwide injunction blocking the initiative.

The New York Times calls the tie vote “a sharp blow” to Obama’s program and “a rebuke to his go-it-alone approach to immigration.” The Washington Post called the deadlock “a significant legal defeat” for Obama.

Obama told reporters that the deadlock is “heartbreaking” for millions of immigrants and its effect will be to freeze his deferred immigration program until after the election.

Obama’s program offers deportation deferrals to immigrants who have lived here since at least January 2010, have no serious criminal record, and have children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. The program is known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA.

Challengers had claimed Obama’s executive action violated the Administrative Procedure Act and Obama’s constitutional duty to “take care” that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. Texas was one of 26 states that challenged the program.

“Today’s decision keeps in place what we have maintained from the very start: one person, even a president, cannot unilaterally change the law,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement. “This is a major setback to President Obama’s attempts to expand executive power, and a victory for those who believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law.”

The case is United States v. Texas.

Don’t Cha Just Admire Huma Abedin? Not…

Posted on August 21, 2016August 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Still waiting on the next presser when it comes to her husband, Anthony. You? He was ‘catfished’ again.

Anthony Weiner caught in new flirty online chat

Modal Trigger
Former New York congressman Anthony Weiner Photo: Illustration Emil Lendof/New York Post

NYP: First he was Carlos Danger. Now — in yet another sexting scandal — he’s a randy “mongoose.”

Sext fiend Anthony Weiner boasted of his animal prowess — claiming he was “deceptively strong . . . like a mongoose” — and gave his cellphone number to a college student during a flirty, private online chat on a recent trip to Los Angeles, The Post has learned.

But the joke was on the horndog pol, whose wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide and close confidante of Hillary Clinton.

The target of his online affection was really a dude. More here. **** But back to Huma…

Huma Abedin worked at a radical Muslim journal for a dozen years

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign aide, and the woman who might be the future White House chief of staff to the first female US president, for a decade edited a radical Muslim publication that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11.

One of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments listed on her campaign Web site is her support for the UN women’s conference in Bejing in 1995, when she famously declared, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Her speech has emerged as a focal point of her campaign, featured prominently in last month’s Morgan Freeman-narrated convention video introducing her as the Democratic nominee.

Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin arrive for a NATO Foreign Minister family photo in front of the Brandenburg Gate in 2011. Photo: Getty Images



Hillary Clinton talks with aide Huma Abedin.  Photo: Getty Images



Clinton and Abedin in Queens. Photo: Getty Images



Hillary Clinton greets people. Huma Abedin is seen at center. Photo: Getty Images

However, soon after that “historic and transformational” 1995 event, as Clinton recently described it, her top aide Huma Abedin published articles in a Saudi journal taking Clinton’s feminist platform apart, piece by piece. At the time, Abedin was assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs working under her mother, who remains editor-in-chief. She was also working in the White House as an intern for then-First Lady Clinton.

Headlined “Women’s Rights are Islamic Rights,” a 1996 article argues that single moms, working moms and gay couples with children should not be recognized as families. It also states that more revealing dress ushered in by women’s liberation “directly translates into unwanted results of sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility and indirectly promote violence against women.” In other words, sexually liberated women are just asking to be raped

“A conjugal family established through a marriage contract between a man and a woman, and extended through procreation is the only definition of family a Muslim can accept,” the author, a Saudi official with the Muslim World League, asserted, while warning of “the dangers of alternative lifestyles.” (Abedin’s journal was founded and funded by the former head of the Muslim World League.)

“Pushing [mothers] out into the open labor market is a clear demonstration of a lack of respect of womanhood and motherhood,” it added.

In a separate January 1996 article, Abedin’s mother — who was the Muslim World League’s delegate to the UN conference — wrote that Clinton and other speakers were advancing a “very aggressive and radically feminist” agenda that was un-Islamic and wrong because it focused on empowering women.

“‘Empowerment’ of women does more harm than benefit the cause of women or their relations with men,” Saleha Mahmood Abedin maintained, while forcefully arguing in favor of Islamic laws that have been roundly criticized for oppressing women.

“By placing women in the ‘care and protection’ of men and by making women responsible for those under her charge,” she argued, “Islamic values generate a sense of compassion in human and family relations.”

“Among all systems of belief, Islam goes the farthest in restoring equality across gender,” she claimed. “Acknowledging the very central role women play in procreation, child-raising and homemaking, Islam places the economic responsibility of supporting the family primarily on the male members.”

She seemed to rationalize domestic abuse as a result of “the stress and frustrations that men encounter in their daily lives.” While denouncing such violence, she didn’t think it did much good to punish men for it.

She added in her 31-page treatise: “More men are victims of domestic violence than women . . . If we see the world through ‘men’s eyes’ we will find them suffering from many hardships and injustices.”

She opposed the UN conference widening the scope of the definition of the family to include “gay and lesbian ‘families.’ ”

Huma Abedin does not apologize for her mother’s views. “My mother was traveling around the world to these international women’s conferences talking about women’s empowerment, and it was normal,” she said in a recent profile in Vogue.

Huma continued to work for her mother’s journal through 2008. She is listed as “assistant editor” on the masthead of the 2002 issue in which her mother suggested the US was doomed to be attacked on 9/11 because of “sanctions” it leveled against Iraq and other “injustices” allegedly heaped on the Muslim world. Here is an excerpt:

“The spiral of violence having continued unabated worldwide, and widely seen to be allowed to continue, was building up intense anger and hostility within the pressure cooker that was kept on a vigorous flame while the lid was weighted down with various kinds of injustices and sanctions . . . It was a time bomb that had to explode and explode it did on September 11, changing in its wake the life and times of the very community and the people it aimed to serve.”

Huma Abedin is Clinton’s longest-serving and, by all accounts, most loyal aide. The devout, Saudi-raised Muslim started working for her in the White House, then followed her to the Senate and later the State Department. She’s now helping run Clinton’s presidential campaign as vice chair and may end up back in the White House.

The contradictions are hard to reconcile. The campaign is not talking, despite repeated requests for interviews.

Until now, these articles which Abedin helped edit and publish have remained under wraps. Perhaps Clinton was unaware she and her mother took such opposing views.

But that’s hard to believe. Her closest adviser served as an editor for that same Saudi propaganda organ for a dozen years. The same one that in 1999 published a book, edited by her mother, that justifies the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation under Islamic law, while claiming “man-made laws have in fact enslaved women.”

And in 2010, Huma Abedin arranged for then-Secretary of State Clinton to speak alongside Abedin’s hijab-wearing mother at an all-girls college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. According to a transcript of the speech, Clinton said Americans have to do a better job of getting past “the stereotypes and the mischaracterizations” of the oppressed Saudi woman. She also assured the audience of burqa-clad girls that not all American girls go “around in a bikini bathing suit.”

At no point in her long visit there, which included a question-and-answer session, did this so-called champion of women’s rights protest the human-rights violations Saudi women suffer under the Shariah laws that Abedin’s mother actively promotes. Nothing about the laws barring women from driving or traveling anywhere without male “guardians.”

If fighting for women’s rights is one of Clinton’s greatest achievements, why has she retained as her closest adviser a woman who gave voice to harsh Islamist critiques of her Beijing platform?

Paul Sperry is author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington.”

Former Gitmo Detainees Arrested, Linked to Brussels Attack

Posted on August 21, 2016August 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Former Gitmo Detainee Arrested, Charged With Being Top ISIS Recruiter

FoxInsider: The same week that President Obama released 15 Guantanamo Bay detainees, a former prisoner was arrested and charged with being a top recruiter for ISIS.

Abu Nassim was arrested in Libya just days after the State Department claimed that very few Gitmo detainees ever return to terror.

Nassim, whose full name is Moez Ben Abdulgader Ben Ahmed Al Fezzani, was reportedly trying to travel to Tunisia, where he is an ISIS commander and most-wanted terrorist.

He was arrested along with approximately 20 other ISIS supporters between the Libyan towns of Rigdaleen and Al-Jmail.

Nassim is considered a top jihadist recruiter in Italy.

*****

ForeignNewsDesk: Zintani forces loyal to the internationally-recognized Libyan National Army arrested Moez Ben Abdulgader Ben Ahmed Fezzani 47, known by his nom de guerre Abu Nassim, last week as he was trying to flee Sirte, Libya for Tunisia.

A commander of ISIS militants in Libya since 2014, Fezzani had been sought by Tunisian authorities in connection with the March 2015 Bardo Museum attack in Tunis.

Twenty-two people including 17 foreigners were killed in the attack later claimed by the Islamic State.

Fezzani, along with 20 Islamic State operatives, was arrested by a police patrol while travelling between the towns of Rigdaleen and Al-Jmail.

News of his purported arrest comes just days after Libyan authorities warned their Italian counterparts about the possibility of an Islamic State cell in Milan with connections to the wanted militant.

Following the capture of ISIS’ headquarters in Sirte last week, officials discovered a cache of documents linking the Italian cell to Fezzani.

Fezzani, who arrived in Italy in the late 80’s, disappeared in 1997 after authorities suspected him of involvement in jihadi activities, later resurfacing in Pakistan before joining Osama Bin Laden’s war in Afghanistan.

Arrested by the U.S. in 2001, Fezzani was held at Bagram’s detention facility before the Obama administration approved his transfer to Italy in 2009.

Fezzani stood trial in Italy for his earlier terror offenses, cooperating in terror activities in Bosnia in 1995, but was acquitted.

Upon appeal, he was sentenced to six years in jail, but by this time had already fled; first to Tunisia where he joined Al Qaeda’s Ansar Al Sharia and then to Syria joining the terror group’s Al Nusra affiliate.

In 2014, he transferred allegiances to ISIS’ Caliph Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, before moving to Libya where he was reportedly appointed a leader of Katibat al-Battar, described as ISIS’ special operations unit in the volatile country.

“If the information on Fezzani proves to be true, it is very disturbing. Just like the head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, this was a man we had in our detention facility and let go,” terrorism analyst Dr. Sebastian Gorka told The Investigative Project on Terror in March about Fezzani’s ISIS appointment.

There has been no confirmation of his arrest from Tunisian authorities, but Fezzani’s capture comes just days after the Obama administration announced its biggest release of Guantanamo Bay detainees as the President attempts to fulfil his pledge to close the detention camp.

*****

MENASTREAM ID is MENASTREAM’s new project where we provide information on terrorists with personal information, background and graphics

The Tunisian Ministry of Interior issued a search warrant on Monday February 8, 2016 for Moez Ben Abdelkader Ben Ahmed Fezzani also known as ‘Abu Nassim’ born 23/03/1969, son of Fatma Chihaoui, from Ezzahrouni, Tunis. The Ministry of Interior classified Moez Fezzani as a dangerous terrorist in its statement:

في إطار تعاون المواطنين مع الوحدات الأمنية بوزارة الداخلية وتوقيا من الأعمال الإرهابيّة، تطلب وزارة الدّاخلية الإبلاغ ال…

Location of the Ezzahrouni neighborhood in Tunis

An older picture of Fezzani

Photo provided by the Ministry of Interior of Tunisia in the search warrant for Fezzani

Moez Fezzani’s has a long history within the sphere of global terrorism that stretches back to both the Bosnian war and the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, jailed for 7 years at the ‘Baghram Prison’. Fezzani’s journey brings him to Italy where he’s is tried together with another Tunisian and former Guantanamo prisoner Riadh Nasri for providing logistical support in 2007 to a terrorist cell in Italy linked to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which evolved into Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. He was acquitted from charges of terrorism in 2011, but Tunisian authorities demanded his deportation, although Italian autorities already considered him a security threat. The first time his deportation was supposed to be carried out he managed to escape and went into hiding in Varese, Lombardy, to be cought once again and deported to Tunisia.

Fezzani joined Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia (AST) in 2012 and was reportedly active in various confrontations, in 2013 Fezzani left for Syria where he joined Jabhat al-Nusra and later ISIS. He reportedly moved to Libya in 2014 as a leader for Katibat al-Battar and according to sources he now holds a key role in Sirte. Fezzani is suspected for being the mastermind and supervisor of the planning processes behind the high-profile attacks against the Bardo Museum and Sousse.

The search warrant for Fezzani by the Ministry of Interior comes at a critical time when Libya facing the threat of foreign intervention, an intervention which will have significant consequences for Tunisia. We can not exclude that the MOI tacticly issued this warrant to raise public awareness facing both the terrorist threat and additional consequences linked to an eventual Libya intervention, we can also assume that MOI on purpose issued this warrant knowing Fezzani is in Libya, thus framing him as a high-profile target for the international coalition.

We are Told to Hate Big Oil, By Whom Exactly?

Posted on August 21, 2016August 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Emails: Dem Officials Wary of Legal Campaign Against Exxon

Internal communications show unease about New York AG’s court battle

FreeBeacon: Democratic officials who enlisted in a legal campaign against the country’s largest oil company privately expressed misgivings about the effort and its crusading leader, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, internal emails reveal.

Schneiderman recruited nearly 20 other state attorneys general last year to participate in a coordinated legal campaign against ExxonMobil. However, Schneiderman appears to be the only official still actively pursuing the effort.

Emails obtained by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute through open records requests help explain their apparent lack of enthusiasm. The emails show that AGs involved in the effort grew wary of Schneiderman’s aggressive tactics.

His campaign centers on allegations that Exxon lied to shareholders and the general public about the financial dangers posed by climate change. Schneiderman has subpoenaed the company, and other states have followed suit, though many have either withdrawn their probes or put them on hold.

Ahead of a March meeting that kicked off the effort, some AGs were already expressing unease about their involvement.

“Just talked with Tom,” an aide to Iowa AG Tom Miller wrote to a colleague on March 25, a few days before Schneiderman convened AGs involved in the effort. “He thinks we may be locked in on this and have to ride it through.”

Related reading: Trump: Obama Bribed New York’s Attorney General To Sue Trump University
There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim.

After the meeting, another Miller aide described Schneiderman as “the wild card for all.”

In a statement accompanying the release of those and other emails, E&E said they demonstrated the legal weaknesses underlying New York’s legal strategy.

“The investigations began with Schneiderman and in just five short months he has watched his support collapse, such that he once again stands alone in his crusade to harass his political opponents under the guise of upholding the law,” the group said.

As the anti-Exxon efforts progressed, other AGs’ offices expressed concern at their apparent scope. They worried Schneiderman was publicly enlisting them in a campaign in which they were not sure they would—or could—participate.

When his office circulated a draft press release announcing the AGs’ collaboration on the Exxon campaign, Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, tried to rein in some of its language.

“At this point, we don’t know what we’re going to agree to, or really what Virginia’s laws and our authorities could allow us to do, so it makes me nervous to say we’ve ‘agreed to work together on key investigations,’” Kelly wrote in an email to Schneiderman staffers.

“Is there any room to dial that one back a notch?” he asked.

An aide to Vermont’s attorney general had similar concerns. When Schneiderman’s office drafted a “thank you” note to AGs who had participated in the March meeting, the aide recommended striking language that implied that some AGs would be conducting their own Exxon probes.

“On the ‘Exxon/Fossil Fuel Company Investigations’ can we drop the word ‘investigations’ from that?” he asked. “Not all of the states have yet opened a formal investigation and there is some sensitivity here (and I suspect in some other states) to saying or indicating we have.”

In fact, New York is the only state still pursuing an Exxon investigation thanks to the wide legal latitude granted by the state’s Martin Act, which gives Schneiderman broader investigative powers than other state AGs.

“Exxon is not really facing a blitzkrieg,” noted environmental activist Bill McKibben, an outspoken proponent of prosecuting Exxon, in a June column. “Only two states have really had the courage to take on what’s been the planet’s most profitable company.”

The other state McKibben referred to was Massachusetts. However, even Massachusetts’ subpoena of Exxon is on hold.

The U.S. Virgin Islands, which subpoenaed Exxon and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank that attorney general Claude Walker accused of abetting fraudulent conduct, withdrew both measures in the face of legal opposition.

“They were in over their head,” Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau said of Walker’s legal campaign “They were going to get pounded and it’s good they are off the field.”

Schneiderman’s office did not return a request for comment.