“Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s credibility suffered another blow recently, after a southwestern Virginia newspaper unearthed records showing a senior assistant in his office communicated through email dozens of times with attorneys representing energy companies in a lawsuit filed by property owners.
Sharon Pigeon, a senior assistant attorney general, “sent at least 52 emails to lawyers of defendants EQT Production and CNX Gas since lawsuits were filed three years ago,” the Bristol Herald Courier reported. Consol Energy, the parent of CNX, has contributed more than $100,000 to Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign since last year.
The energy companies and property owners are fighting over ownership of, and royalties from extracting, coalbed methane gas.
The new details regarding the frequency and substance of the communication between Pigeon and the energy companies make Cuccinelli’s initial response, as implausible as it was, appear even more absurd.
And the details simply magnify the concerns expressed by a federal judge three months ago, when she described the attorney’s correspondence with the energy companies’ legal counsel as ‘shocking.'”