[B]URLINGTON — Attorneys for a conservative legal nonprofit suing Vermont over records say former Attorney General William Sorrell did not comply with a judge’s order during a Monday deposition.
“It was very disappointing. The attorney general refused to answer the vast majority of the questions we asked — fully 95 percent of the questions,” said Energy & Environment Legal Institute attorney Matthew Hardin.
Hardin said they plan to ask the judge to review a transcript of the deposition and order Sorrell to answer questions they believe he improperly ducked.
Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan said his office will wait to review Hardin’s request and the transcript before deciding how to proceed.
However, Donovan said he understood the scope of the deposition was extremely limited under the judge’s order and that Sorrell had provided the required information.
“It’s not unusual for people to object during a deposition to certain questions,” Donovan said.
Energy & Environment Legal Institute is suing for records from Sorrell’s tenure as attorney general that relate to Vermont’s nascent role in a probe of Exxon Mobil. The group claims Sorrell was working with the New York attorney general and other attorneys general to investigate the oil giant. The institute says the investigation effectively chilled free speech.
Hardin has said a dispute over how to value carbon emissions is a policy debate, not something that should be investigated as a crime.
Donovan argued unsuccessfully to have Sorrell removed from the case as a defendant, and later to block the deposition from going forward. Last week, Superior Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout ruled that E&E Legal Institute presented enough evidence that Sorrell had used a personal email account for public business.
As a result, the group should be able to depose him as part of discovery in its records lawsuit, she ruled. The deposition, however, was limited to “the extent to which (Sorrell) has documents and correspondence on his private email account that relate to the specific public records request in this case.”
The underlying request includes four search terms, two individuals’ names and two email domains — one domain for the New York attorney general and one for the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
However, Sorrell refused to answer when asked what he discovered when he searched for those terms in his private account, Hardin said. Sorrell also refused to say whether he deleted messages on that account, and whether items in its trash folder were cleared manually or automatically, among other questions, a transcript of the deposition shows.
Hardin said he asked Sorrell directly whether he had used his Gmail account to send messages that would be subject to the group’s request, and Sorrell declined to answer.
The deposition lasted about 45 minutes, according to notations made by the transcriptionist.
In every instance when Sorrell declined to answer a question, it was on the advice of Megan Shafritz, chief of the attorney general’s Civil Litigation Division.
Hardin said he was disappointed that Donovan’s staff was taking what he called a “blanket denial” approach to divulging information related to the group’s public records request.
Donovan said he would need to wait and see what Hardin and E&E Legal Institute put in writing to the court before deciding whether to object to further depositions for Sorrell.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Vermont ruled that the private emails of public officials can be treated as public records.
