Free Republic

It seems the prosecutors feared it would just be too humiliating to admit they had nothing, and hoped they’d somehow stumble on . . . something. Still, Thursday’s final retreat, dropping most charges at the very end, was a shocker. It left the judge dismissing those charges “with prejudice,” so the state can never refile them. And Exxon’s infuriated lawyers say those claims “have cost in many respects the most severe reputation harm to the company and to the executives,” so they want still stronger sanctions. Judge Ostrager has 30 days to issue a decision. The prosecutors are surely praying he’ll find...

Last Thursday, in a move that surprised everyone but perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all, New York State Attorney General Tish James withdrew two counts of fraud against ExxonMobil during her closing arguments in the flimsy case she and her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, spent the last half-decade pursuing against the energy giant. Tellingly, AG James dismissed the two of her original fraud counts that were based on laws requiring demonstration of actual harm in order to obtain a positive judgment. Her suit claimed that ExxonMobil’s alleged “fraud” of keeping two separate estimates of the future costs of...

The New York attorney general’s dark-side personal life was an open secret in Democratic Party circles. New York State attorney general Eric Schneiderman has resigned, just hours after it was reported that he had been accused of violent assaults on women he had dated. These allegations, which include threats that Schneiderman made to stalk and kill the women if they told on him, came as a shock—except to anyone who has followed his career in politics. Schneiderman’s louche ethics have been well known. You didn’t need an “in” at Albany watering holes; just reading the newspapers would have told you...