Cuccinelli takes aim at Michael Mann

It turns out Michael Mann, he of “Mike’s Nature Trick,” spent five years at the University of Virginia selling his snake oil the theory of man-made global warming – and scoring nearly half a million in taxpayer money.

Well, Ken Cuccinelli noticed, and he wants to know what he was doing with the dough (Watts Up With That, emphasis added):

Now, it appears, (Cuccinelli) may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.

If Cuccinelli succeeds in finding a smoking gun like the purloined emails that led to the international scandal dubbed Climategate, Cuccinelli could seek the return of all the research money, legal fees, and trebled damages.

Unless I seriously miss my guess, this makes Cuccinelli the first public official to demand accountability from the folks who peddled this nonsense.

If he keeps this up, he could run for president – whether he likes it or not.

In the meantime . . . memo to the Nature Trick Mann: We want our money back.

Cross-posted to RWL

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