The American Tradition Institute have just revealed that Michael Mann has engaged lawyers to try to intervene in the FOIA case between the institute and the University of Virginia.
Dr. Michael Mann, lead author of the discredited "hockey stick" graph that was once hailed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the "smoking gun" of the catastrophic man-made global warming theory, has asked to intervene in American Tradition Institute's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that seeks certain records produced by Mann and others while he was at the University of Virginia, for the purpose of keeping them hidden from the taxpayer.
Specifically over the weekend ATI's Environmental Law Center received service from two Pennsylvania attorneys who seek the court's permission to argue for Dr. Mann to intervene in ATI's case. The attorneys also filed a motion to stay production of documents still withheld by UVA, which are to be provided to ATI's lawyers in roughly two weeks under a protective order that UVA voluntarily agreed to in May. Dr. Mann's lawyers also desire a hearing in mid-September, in an effort to further delay UVA's scheduled production of records under the order.
Dr. Mann's argument, distilled, is that the court must bend the rules to allow him to block implementation of a transparency law, so as to shield his sensibilities from offense once the taxpayer – on whose dime he subsists – sees the methods he employed to advance the global warming theory and related policies. ATI's Environmental Law Center is not sympathetic.