Stunning Testimony in the Mann v. Steyn Defamation Trial: Climate Alarmist Mann is Not Paying a Penny for his Army of Lawyers!

Guest Author: Defense Attorney Roger Roots, J.D., Ph.D.

“The left” is bankrupting voices on “the right” in lawfare defamation trials around the country.

Multi-million-dollar defamation judgments have recently been imposed against Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani, Ammon Bundy, and even Donald Trump.  And now, a twelve-year-old defamation lawsuit by climate activist professor Michael Mann against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg has gotten underway in a D.C. courtroom.

Steyn is the conservative writer and spokesman who regularly substituted for Rush Limbaugh on his top-ranked radio program.

Simberg is a former science expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

The case has been languishing in pretrial motion practice for years and several prior defendants, including the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, are no longer in the case.

The Mann v. Steyn trial is scheduled to extend into February. But the biggest bombshell of the trial may have dropped on Wednesday, January 24.

An attorney for Simberg asked Dr. Mann how much Mann was paying for his attorneys and if Mann would have any legal debts from the case.

Michael Mann admitted that he hadn’t paid a penny for the several law firms representing him over the past 12 years or to the four lawyers (and several staff people) representing him at trial.

And Mann said he would have no legal debts from the case regardless of whether he won or lost.

The courtroom audience was stunned. Steyn and Simberg appeared shocked as well.  By some accounts, Steyn has already spent several million dollars defending himself.

The years of litigation appear to have taken a physical toll on Steyn as well; he has suffered three heart attacks and is now relegated to a wheelchair. There are at least ten lawyers participating in the trial: four for Mann, four for Simberg, and two assisting Steyn—who is technically pro se (acting as his own attorney).

The admission by Mann begs the question of who is paying for Mann’s massively expensive lawfare defamation case against Steyn and Simberg. The trial is being closely watched by high-profile individuals and groups on all sides of the climate debate.

Bill Nye “The Science Guy” is visibly sitting in the audience, supporting Mann. Former Congresswoman and presidential candidate Michelle Bachman is also watching the trial, obviously supporting Steyn.

Unlike the defamation trials of Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones, and Ammon Bundy, it appears that the Mann v. Steyn trial will offer something of an actual examination of the merits.  Some of the biggest names in climate science (and skepticism) are listed as potential witnesses, including Mann himself, Raymond Bradley, Naomi Oreskes, Roger Pielke, jr., Judith Curry John Christy, Steve McIntyre, and Ross McKitrick. The judge, Alfred Irving, appears fair enough.

Professor Mann, now of the University of Pennsylvania, alleges Steyn and Simberg defamed him back in 2012 by authoring columns which linked Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” temperature graph to the horrendous child rape case of Penn State football trainer Jerry Sandusky.

Like Sandusky’s loathsome activities, the questionable climate claims of Dr. Mann were mostly brushed under the rug by administrators at Penn State, where Mann taught at the time.  Both Steyn and Simberg, and other writers around the world, including even the Chronicle of Higher Education, drew the same analogy. But Mann sued only the conservatives.

From the first appearance of Mann’s infamous hockey stick temperature graph, many learned scientists recognized the graph as an imaginative farce.  Mann and other global-warming theorists claimed to have grafted ancient tree-ring, ice-core, and sediment data onto modern thermometer data to give the appearance that global temps have been flat, steady, and cool for a thousand years until the past 50 years when temps have shot up steeply.  Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) adopted Mann’s ridiculous chart in its 3^rd Assessment report in 2001.  Skeptics around the world have recognized the hockey stick as an agenda-driven concoction.

The global warming doomsday religious community is plainly hoping the Mann v. Steyn trial will dampen criticism of “The Science.”  Stay tuned!

The trial continues into February.

The post Stunning Testimony in the Mann v. Steyn Defamation Trial: Climate Alarmist Mann is Not Paying a Penny for his Army of Lawyers! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.