for those who didn't know, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has been going after Michael Mann. As you can read in this Washington Post Story, the Virginia Supreme Court has rejected his attempts to obtain records from the University of Virginia with respect to Mann's grants.
n 2010, Cuccinelli (R), a global warming skeptic, issued a civil investigative demand, essentially a subpoena, for documents from the state’s flagship university.
He sought five grant applications prepared by former professor Michael Mann and all e-mails between Mann and his research assistants, secretaries and 39 other scientists from across the country.
The Court ruled that Cuccinelli lacked the authority to demand the records - as you can read in
the Court's opinion,
we affirm the judgment of the
circuit court setting aside the CIDs, but, unlike the circuit
court, we set aside the CIDs with prejudice, on the different
ground that the University of Virginia, as an agency of the
Commonwealth, does not constitute a "person" under the Fraud
Against Taxpayers Act and therefore cannot be the proper
subject of a CID. Accordingly, we enter final judgment here in
favor of the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.
The
Poststory has the AG's response, sent out in an email, which reads in part
“Today, the court effectively held that state agencies do not have to provide state-owned property to state investigators looking into potential fraud involving government funds.”
In short, the Commonwealth's highest court slapped down the overreach by the AG, and the "with prejudice" part of the ruling means he cannot further pursue it in Virginia courts.