Man Accusing Climate Scientists of Fraud, is Talking Money from Man Accused of Fraud

Roll up! Roll up! It's the full of shit event of the year! A right-wing nut-job by the name of Cuccinelli has started a witch-hunt against climate scientists Michael Mann, asking for every single paper and email he produced while working at a the University of Virginia so as to cherry-pick and quote-mine for evidence of fraud:

[The] Virginia attorney general has filed papers against the climate researcher, Michael Mann. Mann had worked at the University of Virginia for 5 or 6 years, doing climate studies that cost the state about a half million dollars over that time. (To put that in perspective, that's a middling sized grant; big biomedical researchers can get much more than that.) Cuccinelli is claiming that Mann committed fraud, and wants to demand all that money back.

There are no grounds to consider Mann to have committed any breach of ethics. The sole foundation for his legal attack is the hacked email messages from the CRU, which contained no nefarious revelations…other than that some scientists are really pissed off at clueless denialists like Cuccinelli. Most annoyingly, Mann was already subjected to an ethics review, again driven by people complaining about the CRU emails, and was completely absolved of any wrongdoing.

Note that that while Mann has been accused of fraud by this prick Cuccinelli without any evidence and despite a review concluding he did nothing wrong... Cuccinelli himself got over $55,000 in funds from somebody who is under investigation for fraud and there is evidence of wrong doing - and yet Cuccinelli says his donor is innocent until proven guilty:

The second largest individual contributor to Cuccinelli's campaign for Virginia attorney general last year was Bobby Thompson, a Florida man who is the founder of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, and who donated $55,500 to Cuccinelli.

A lengthy investigative report in the St. Petersburg Times raised numerous red flags about USNVA. For example, the paper could not confirm the existence of 84 out of 85 listed officers for the group. The only one they could find was Thompson, who moved out of his Tampa bungalow, leaving no forwarding address, soon after being questioned contacted by reporters. The group is now under investigation in three states.... But Cuccinelli has refused, with his camp saying he'll give up the money if Thompson is convicted of a crime.

Nice.