By Thomas Catenacci | Fox News
President Biden’s nominee to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was previously involved in a dark money-fueled effort to file numerous climate nuisance lawsuits across the country.
Ann Carlson, who currently serves as acting NHTSA administrator, was formerly an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles where she also served as the co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment. During her time at the institute, she coordinated with its chairman Dan Emmett to raise money for lawsuits designed to hobble the fossil fuel industry.
Carlson and Emmett revealed details about their behind-the-scenes efforts to spearhead the litigation in email correspondence from 2017 and 2018 obtained by the watchdog group Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) and highlighted in a Fox News Digital report last year. The two worked to raise money that was then funneled through nonprofit organizations to the private law firm Sher Edling.
In their emails, Emmett and Carlson discuss how Chuck Savitt, Sher Edling’s director of strategic client relationships, had sought Emmett’s support and had already received support from Terry Tamminen in his role as the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation’s CEO, a title he held between 2016 and 2019. Tamminen now serves on the advisory board of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment.
