Red state, ultra conservative AGs in bed with rapacious, unpatriotic, international, corrupt megacorporation. Who would have thought?
“Witch Hunt.” Another buzzword de jour for the Right.
"The company says the alias was created to help the former CEO avoid a flood of messages after environmental activists obtained his actual email address".
What courage and honesty.
The emails!
Deleted emails???
LOCK HIM UP!!!
Only those paying attention.
This is a really interesting legal issue that touches on free speech and privacy rights.
A citizen has the right to make a public statement, even (with limited exceptions) a false one. A citizen has the right to speak anonymously. (I think I have the right to make up a fake user name and use it to make false statements; you’ll have to decide for yourself if I’m doing that now.)
A CEO is not allowed to make a false public statement that materially affects the company’s stock price, because in that limited arena it’s stock fraud. For example, if Tillerson said as ExxonMobil CEO that global warming will have no effect on the company’s future business but knew it was false, that would be free speech but stock fraud.
So: does a CEO have a right to make an anonymous statement that materially affects the company’s stock price? I’m going to say no, that’s still free speech but stock fraud.
The trump administration really is just a giant crime cartel. I really hope we can recover from this.
Lying Ted Wells still has his license to practice law in the US - wow, we are becoming a state ruled by crooked Oligarchs and their agents.
Most of the “Tracker” emails have been deleted, Exxon says, citing the company’s practice of automatically deleting emails after a certain period of time.
That’s a pretty handy policy.
“If you’re asking me to state on the record that Exxon has behaved in an
exemplary manner, I decline to do so,” Ostrager said in a recent
hearing. “If Exxon is asking me to state on the record that the New York
AG has proceeded in an exemplary manner, I decline to do that also.”
The same reasoning considered, “I do not believe nicotine is addictive” no less exemplary than the depositions of nine tobacco executives. Unfortunately for big tobacco, internal data sunk their boat.
Exxon deserves no less scrutiny than big tobacco.
The period of time diminishes exponentially with salary.
Fixed.
I don’t think you understand. The CEO of Exxon/Mobil was a guy by the name of Rex Tillerson. Rex didn’t send any misleading emails. It was some guy named Wayne Tracker who, to the best of my knowledge, was not the CEO of Exxon.
Trump will issue an executive order absolving all members of his administration of any law breaking activity…Putin did this for his team when running for his 1st so called Presidential term.
Well, we’ll have to hope our judicial institutions are a bit more independent than their Russian equivalents and that they will put the kibosh on that nonsense forthwith.
A citizen who makes a false statement which causes damage to someone’s reputation will be sued for defamation and will lose except under some very limited circumstances. For example, false statements about public figures have to pass different tests to warrant success in a lawsuit. Freedom of speech gives citizens the right to say virtually anything but the right does not protect them from lawsuits if what they say is actionable. So, for instance, a CEO can publicly lie about something like climate change but if proven to be untrue, and the statements can be shown to have caused a financial loss to a stockholder, the CEO and his/her company can and will be successfully sued.
Be very suspicious of US Giant Corporations and Monopolies like Exxon-Mobil and the top execs and board members that direct those companies. They are out to do nothing but make money and lots of it…and we need a strong government to make sure they do NOT over take our nation. So far, the giant corporations are winning on all fronts while the US and our Democracy is quickly decaying into a corrupt and crooked state.
Rex Tillerson is a very dangerous man.
Speaking of ethics:
More:
Many Americans have been calling the once-obscure office to report on, or demand action on, ethical issues involving the administration. That has caused a spike in OGE’s workload, without an increase in staff.
The agency reports that during the six months between October 2008 and March 2009, as the Obama presidency was taking shape, it got 733 public contacts, such as calls, letters and emails. During the October 2016 to March 2017 period in the Trump era, it was swamped with 39,105 contacts — an increase of 5,235 percent.