Maryland AG Becomes First to Hide Plea for Bloomberg Money from Public

On Monday afternoon, May 6, 2019, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh filed an Answer in response to an open records lawsuit by Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C., a suit that seeks Frosh’s application to Michael Bloomberg’s “Center for State Impacts” for a privately hired prosecutor to “advanc[e] progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions.”

That Center hired and is paying an attorney $125,000 plus benefits to serve as a “Pro Bono [sic] Special Counsel” in Frosh’s office in pursuit of issues of importance to Bloomberg and his Center. The group was organized for this purpose after the election of Donald Trump dealt the global warming agenda a setback.

As GAO details in its complaint, Frosh actually set the attorney’s six-figure salary before then appointing him a “pro bono” lawyer.

This is problematic: as affirmed in 2015 in State vs. Westray, under Maryland law “’Pro bono,’ of course, means that not only does the client not need to pay, but also the attorney represents the client without compensation.”

GAO has subsequently learned that Frosh first appointed the lawyer on January 3, 2018, but without citing any authority under Maryland law, which apparently does not exist. Then in another letter dated two weeks later — though apparently back-dated, as it was emailed to the lawyer over two months later — Frosh then appointed him citing the inapplicable “pro bono” provision.

Maryland OAG’s defiance represents a landmark refusal to provide a document that, while surely politically embarrassing and possibly offering legal or ethical peril, is not privileged.

That makes Frosh’s Office the only attorney general’s office to claim, brazenly, that whatever it promised to Bloomberg’s group, it is properly hidden from the public’s view.

More