Ken Cuccinelli has tried to dodge the simmer scandal that is harming him greatly with voters in Southwest Virginia by claiming that his office did not know about Assistant Attorney General Sharon Pidgeon's aid to affiliates of Consol Energy, one of Cuccinelli's largest campaign donors. As with pretty much everything that comes out of Cuccinelli's mouth, the claims are untrue. As the Bristol Herald Courier is reporting, Pidgeon continued advising the energy companies against Virginia landowners for months after Cuccinelli's office learned of the ongoing communications. In short, Cuccinelli has lied yet again. Just as he has lied about his extreme agenda while in the Virginia Senate and then as Attorney General. As noted previously, from my experience with the AG's office, it is utterly inconceivable that Pidgeon followed this course of action without the knowledge, much less the direction of her superiors, including Cuccinelli himself. Here are highlights from the Herald Courier coverage:
A state Attorney General’s Office staffer continued to advise energy companies how to fight landowners suing over natural gas royalties for months after the state’s top law office learned of the communications, a Bristol Herald Courier review of the emails shows.
Whether the communications continued with AG Ken Cuccinelli’s knowledge remains a mystery because his office refuses to say when he personally learned of the emails or when he officially shut down the staffer’s contact with the corporate attorneys.
Despite being in the spotlight, AG staffer Sharon Pigeon went on to suggest how a corporate lawyer might pull the rug out from under one of the landowner plaintiffs.
“How many hats can he (the plaintiff) wear in all this?” she complained in one of two emails sent after her correspondence became the grist of legal debate. “Apparently, he wants the benefits of the royalty being paid, but wants to undermine the system enabling that payment.”
Mention of 52 emails swapped between Pigeon and lawyers for energy companies EQT Production and CNX Gas appeared in court documents in mid-2012. Some of the actual emails — sent from 2010 through 2012 — were publicly filed later that year as part of the court record.
At the time, lawyers representing Southwest Virginia landowners in a series of five class-action lawsuits were arguing for access to Pigeon’s emails to determine whether they would bolster the fight for the royalties.
Pigeon continued to offer advice on how to defeat one of the lawsuits in an email sent to CNX attorney Jonathan Blank on Aug. 28, 2012, and later on Sept. 5, 2012.
In the first email, she suggested Blank could shoot down the case if he could find any mention in state or local records of royalty payments made to one of the main plaintiffs or to his relatives. This is the email where she complains that the plaintiff wears “many hats.”
In the second email, she merely states “To refresh your memory,” and includes a copy of the previous email where she recommends the records search.
Cuccinelli says his office joined the federal lawsuit only to fight the constitutional challenges to the Virginia Gas and Oil Act, which created the escrow accounts.
A Herald Courier review of her emails shows she suggested such courtroom tactics as combating a likely information request to discover other landowners owed royalties, as well as countering arguments against the amount of royalty proceeds they sought.
The emails have become a sore spot in Republican Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial run — CNX parent company CONSOL Energy has poured $140,044 into his campaign since he became attorney general in 2010.
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