As the Four Tops once sang,"It’s the same old song." And while graduate students in UVA’s Department of Environmental Science serenaded Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli with a different song last week, UVA’s latest response to the AG’s fraud investigation of climate scientist Michael Mann suggests Cuccinelli is humming a familiar tune. A motion filed yesterday in Albemarle County Circuit Court asks that Cuccinelli’s latest civil investigative demand (CID) be set aside while an appeal to an August ruling is resolved.
"The appeal and the petition at issue here involve the same parties and largely the same issues," reads the motion. UVA has spent roughly $350,000 addressing the AG’s investigation, according to the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.
The motion asks that the court resolve Cuccinelli’s appeal of an August ruling that set aside his first civil investigative demands (CIDs) due to the similarities between the previous failed attempts and the most recent demand. Cuccinelli’s latest CID asks whether Mann committed an act of fraud by including previously contested climate research in his CV for a grant to study the Sahara. UVA Professor Howard Epstein told C-VILLE last week that Mann’s research has "been vetted by the scientific community." So, to take it from the Tops…
