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The decision by
Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Heidi Brieger denying Exxon's
request for an order exempting it from handing over the
documents represents a legal victory for Attorney General Maura
Healey, who is investigating the world's largest publicly traded
oil company's climate policies.
"This order affirms our longstanding authority to investigate
fraud," Healey said on Twitter following the decision, adding
that Exxon "must come clean about what it knew about climate
change."
Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said the company was "reviewing the
decision to determine next steps."
Healey is one of two state prosecutors, the other being her
counterpart in New York, investigating whether Exxon knowingly
misled its shareholders and the public as to what it knew about
climate change.
The investigations follow separate reports by online news
publication Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times
showing that Exxon worked to play down the risks of climate
change despite its own scientists' having raised concerns about
it decades earlier.
The news came on the day former Exxon Chief Executive Rex
Tillerson faced a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on his
nomination to serve as President-elect Donald Trump's secretary
of state.
Asked during the hearing if he believed human activity was
contributing to climate change, Tillerson did not answer yes or
no, but said, "The increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in
the atmosphere are having an effect. Our abilities to predict
that effect are very limited."
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Leslie
Adler)
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