San Francisco Frontiers - US Republicans announce probe into environment groups

The House Committee on Natural Resources, chaired by Congressman Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, has sent letters to 19 organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council, demanding written answers and in-person testimony regarding their business practices.

"The Committee is particularly concerned with (the organizations') coordinated capitalization on misleading and emotive messaging to build powerful and profitable litigation machines funded by taxpayer dollars through the exploitation of statutory fee-shifting provisions," it said.

Since taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump has pushed forward with policies heavily criticized by conservationists -- from undoing the scientific determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and welfare, to downsizing protected public lands and weakening endangered species protections.

As a result, green groups have frequently sued the administration and under various statutes, their legal teams are paid from government funds when they win in court.

The committee railed against the groups for collecting "taxpayer-funded reimbursements for their attorneys' fees to fund litigation often brought before activist judges and aimed at blocking pro-growth and pro-natural resource management activities."

But Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, stressed nonprofit lawyers are only paid in government money "when the court finds that an agency has broken the law that Congress itself has passed."

This "seems to basically be: 'we don't like you because you're successful at your job, and therefore we're going to try to be very punitive and harassing to see if we can bully you for a while,'" he told AFP.

Hartl said the request for documents was "vague, broad and confusing" and he believed the purpose of demanding in-person interviews is to "tr to get us in a perjury trap or a contempt of Congress type of situation."

"We're not intimidated by this. It's going to be fantastic fundraising for us," he said.

Recent wins by nonprofits against the administration include an appeals court ruling in June that the Environmental Protection Agency must uphold strengthened air pollution standards for fine particular matter or soot.

N.Flores--SFF