A Virginia judge on Monday ruled that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli failed to prove why his investigation should be given the documents of former University of Virginia professor and climate change scientist Michael Mann.

 

Albemarle County Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled against Cuccinelli’s “civil-investigative demands” because the attorney general did not clearly state what Mann did that was false or fraudulent.

But Cuccinelli said he saw a small victory in the ruling. The judge wrote that “the University of Virginia is a proper subject for a CID, and the Attorney General may investigate grants made with Commonwealth of Virginia funds to professors such as Dr. Mann.”

 

The attorney general, who is known to be a climate change skeptic, pledged to continue investigating Mann for manipulating data to obtain government grants. Under Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, he charged that Mann had stolen money from the Commonwealth’s taxpayers by obtaining the government grants.

 

“While this was not an outright ruling in our favor, I am pleased that the judge has agreed with my office on several key legal points and has given us a framework for issuing a new civil investigative demand to get the information necessary to continue our investigation into whether or not fraud has been committed against the commonwealth,” Cuccinelli said in a statement.

 

But the judge ruled that “It is not clear what [Mann] did that was misleading, false, or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

 

Mann, who was a professor at UVA from 1999 to 2005 and now serves at Pennsylvania State University, is the author of the “hockey stick graphs” that show the global temperature over the last 1000 years, with a sharp spike in recent years. Controversy broke out over the graphs and other climate change science after emails between Mann and other scientists were leaked in November. The emails seemed to show Mann and other scientists were trying to manipulate data. But several probes of the emails  and an investigation at Penn State cleared the professor of academic forgery.

 

Peatross also ruled Cuccinelli can only investigate Mann for one out of the five grants he obtained for climate research. The other four were funded with federal money.

 

Mann applauded the ruling as a victory for academic freedom.

 

“It is a victory not just for me and the university, but for all scientists who live in fear that they may be subject to a politically-motivated witch hunt when their research findings prove inconvenient to powerful vested interests,” he said in a statement.

 

Cuccinelli isn’t convinced. He said he will try to get information related to the grant now that he knows what the judge wants.