(DCNF)—Democratic attorneys general who are suing to block Elon Musk’s supposed federal “power grab” are actively looking to hire lawyers from a program established with cash from Democrat mega donor Michael Bloomberg.
Keith Ellison of Minnesota, William Tong of Connecticut and Anthony Brown of Maryland are three of the 14 Democrat attorneys general who filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that President Donald Trump broke the law in appointing Musk to launch a full assault on wasteful governance via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While the three officials say that Musk — an unelected official and billionaire — undermines the Constitution, each of their offices are soliciting applicants from a New York University (NYU) law school program that received about $6 million from Bloomberg, who is an unelected billionaire, in 2017.
NYU School of Law’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) “studies and supports the work of state attorneys general in defending, enforcing, and promoting strong laws and policies in the areas of climate, environmental justice, environmental protection, and clean energy,” according to its website. SEEIC started with the help of about $6 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bloomberg’s charitable organization, and it has placed fellows into state attorney general offices in the past to assist with lawsuits targeting major energy companies for their role in climate change, for example.
SEEIC’s website currently features open applications for special attorney general positions inside the offices of Tong, Ellison and Brown; while the particulars vary for these positions, they all generally focus on climate, energy and related issues by design, according to their respective descriptions. However, SEEIC pays the salaries of its fellows, rather than the state governments that compensate the sitting attorneys general.
The description of the open roles in Minnesota notes that preferred qualifications include “a background in federal administrative law challenges,” suggesting that any prospective hire may be working on challenges to the Trump administration’s aggressive energy agenda. Depending on their level of experience and qualifications, applicants hired by the three attorneys general can rake in anywhere from $85,000 to $174,000 in salary.
While they are actively seeking out climate-focused lawyers funded by an unelected billionaire, the three Democrats are at the same time deeply concerned over their belief that Trump broke the law in deputizing Musk to make the government more efficient with his DOGE team.
“There is no greater threat to democracy than the accumulation of state power in the hands of a single, unelected individual. Although our constitutional system was designed to prevent the abuses of an 18th century monarch, the instruments of unchecked power are no less dangerous in the hands of a 21st century tech baron,” the Democrat attorneys’ general lawsuit states. “In recent weeks, Defendant Elon Musk, with President Donald J. Trump’s approval, has roamed through the federal government unraveling agencies, accessing sensitive data, and causing mass chaos and confusion for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people.”
In personal statements, Ellison bemoaned that “Trump installed Elon Musk at the head of that agency without vetting and Senate confirmation,” while Tong lamented that “no one elected Elon Musk” and that “Donald Trump has allowed this unelected billionaire to worm his way into our government.” For his part, Brown said that “the president has given one man unchecked power to reshape our government.”
Bloomberg has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into climate activist groups and organizations explicitly aiming to crush the coal and petrochemical industries in the U.S. After Bloomberg dropped out of the 2020 presidential race, he proceeded to give future President Joe Biden tens of millions of dollars to beat Trump.
“It’s quite entertaining from a consumer protection perspective to watch public officials who are using billionaire-backed law firms to push climate change cases to fundamentally reshape our economy and remove products from store shelves, and officials who are actively soliciting for billionaire funded attorneys to be placed in their offices, turn around and sue over the amount of influence of a billionaire who they don’t agree with and don’t control,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And that’s before considering how much money the federal government under Joe Biden shoveled out to left-wing nonprofits to subsidize their collective efforts to reshape our country, which is exactly what is under pressure from the efforts of Elon Musk and others in the Trump administration.”
The offices of Tong, Brown and Ellison did not respond to requests for comment.
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