The National Association of Attorneys General was blasted again, this time by eight of its members in a letter sent on May 24 for its increasingly leftward tilt.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron sent the letter, which was signed by the attorneys general of Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.
The Cameron letter notes, in part, “we write to bring to your attention a trend that is antithetical to NAAG’smission as a bipartisan organization: increasingly partisan programming and the seeming exclusion of conservative members in favor of more liberal ones.”
“This concern directly ties to the above concerns, as NAAG operates three ‘fund committees’ that administer millions of dollars of settlement proceeds. To access these monies, state attorneys general must submit grant applications to the fund committees, which the committees then review. Republican attorneys general serve on these committees but are in the minority on two of the three committees, both of which control vast amounts of settlement dollars,” continued the Kentucky attorney general. “That partisan divide has had real and serious consequences for our states.”
“As you know, there are reports of fund committees constructively barring Republicans from the application processes, while these same committees appropriate settlement dollars to fund left-wing programming. Furthermore, fund committees are now issuing grants that are more like loans than grants,” he said.
“Of course, loans must be repaid, which incentivizes states to pursue litigation for a financial return, regardless of whether such litigation is justified. The result is NAAG’s promotion of ‘entrepreneurial litigation’ and ‘suing businesses for profit,’ all of which is ‘more in line with the plaintiffs’ bar’ than making whole those who have
been harmed,” he added.
The Tennessee Star previously reported that Attorney General Slatery had issued a statement in support of the NAAG, even after the attorneys general of Texas, Montana, and Missouri had announced their withdrawal in protest of the organization’s march leftward.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in his letter notifying the association of his intent to withdraw, “While we have been a driving force for NAAG’s success – both financially and on key issues – the Association’s leftward shift over the past half-decade has been intolerable.”
“Indeed, this liberal bent has fundamentally undermined NAAG’s role as a ‘nonpartisan national forum’ that ‘provides a community … to collaboratively address’ important issues,” he continued. “We can no longer spend our taxpayers’ money to sustain our membership with NAAG under these circumstances.”
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Aaron Gulbransen is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]. Follow Aaron on GETTR, Twitter, and Parler.
Photo “Daniel Cameron” by Office of the Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Background Photo “United States Capitol” by David Maiolo. CC BY-SA 3.0.
