Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti appeared in-studio on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, to discuss the first-of-its-kind lawsuit his office filed Monday against financial services giant BlackRock over alleged violations of consumer protection laws.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: You’re the, as far as I can tell, you’re the only attorney general in the United States that has done a lawsuit like this. Is that right?
Jonathan Skrmetti: That is correct. And that, I mean we’re a team. The Republican AGs have been working together hard on these issues. We’ve been looking at it. We’ve been sending letters. We’ve been investigating.
So this is not Tennessee against the world, although I’m sure BlackRock’s lawyers are going to make us feel like that. But the other AGs are looking at their own angles. We have a really good consumer protection law in Tennessee, and that gives us some options that some of the other states might not have.
And so, we were able to use what’s, at heart, a really simple law to get out front and file this first suit.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Do you anticipate other states will use their consumer protection laws to file similar lawsuits at some point?
Jonathan Skrmetti: They might. You know, in a lot of states, the consumer protection laws don’t necessarily apply to the marketing of securities.
We have some court cases that say that that is the case in Tennessee, so they might not have the same options that we have; but there are other laws in other states and a lot of creative attorney general offices out there who are going to be looking at this.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now you took office a little over a year ago.
You’ve been working on this for some time.
Jonathan Skrmetti: Yes.
Michael Patrick Leahy: How did you come up with this particular strategy? What’s your team on it and when did you decide to pull the trigger?
Jonathan Skrmetti: When I came in, one of the things that we were looking to do was stand up the Strategic Litigation Unit, which was proposed by the governor, funded by the legislature, and we’re very grateful for that.
And one of the things that Strategic Litigation was intended to do was corporate accountability, to look at some of these companies and make sure that they’re doing right by Tennesseans.
Arizona had been looking at these issues under Mark Brnovich when he was the attorney general. When he left office, some of his team spun off and started their own operation – in fact, it may have been a little bit before he left office.
So they’d been looking at this. And we’ve been using them as outside counsel to help put this case together. And then we have some of our internal folks getting up to speed on it. And it’s a small team – it’s a relatively small team for what is no doubt going to be a big fight.
But I feel really good about our team.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Big fight.
Now let’s talk about that for a minute. When are you looking at doing this?
I mean, you realize, obviously, BlackRock is one of the largest, most successful hedge fund managers in history, how much money do they manage, like a trillion dollars?
Jonathan Skrmetti: Like, almost $10 trillion,
Michael Patrick Leahy: $10 trillion.
And so, they have been really forcing – to me, my view – forcing this ESG agenda on Fortune 500 companies’ CEOs who don’t necessarily want to do it, but they look at the pressure coming from these shareholders saying ‘You got to do the ESG stuff’ and they say, ‘Well, that’s not really going to maximize my profits.’
And then Larry Fink and his crowd say, ‘We don’t care. We’re going after all of these ESG initiatives that we think are important.’
When you put this together, did you think, well, Larry Fink and his buddies might be ready to punch back?
Jonathan Skrmetti: There’s no doubt. They’re a very sophisticated operation. He is incredibly influential.
And I was reflecting the other day, yeah, I’ve been in barely over a year, gotten in a bunch of fights with the administration. We’re suing Google, we’re suing Meta [Facebook], we’re in a big fight with TikTok, we’ve been looking at Ticketmaster, and now we’re in a fight with BlackRock.
I’m a little worried about my post-A.G. employment opportunities.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Tennessee loves you, by the way, so don’t worry. Tennessee loves the fighting A.G., right? I mean, this is, you know, this is the land of Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson, right? We like fighters here.
Jonathan Skrmetti: Well, I’ve got a job to do and I’m, I’m really honored to get to do it. I’ve got a great team helping me and you know, just because the company is big and powerful doesn’t mean it can get away with whatever it wants.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now let’s go back to your buddy, Larry Fink. Did he have any expectation that you’d be filing this lawsuit?
Jonathan Skrmetti: Under our consumer protection law? We have to give notice to companies to let them know and to give them the opportunity to be heard. So it wasn’t just dropped on them out of nowhere.
Michael Patrick Leahy: When did you first tell Larry, ‘Hey, I’m going to be filing a lawsuit against you here in Tennessee?’
Jonathan Skrmetti: We sent a letter, gosh, it was a few weeks ago. I don’t remember the exact date.
Michael Patrick Leahy: How did they respond?
Jonathan Skrmetti: Well, I mean, I think they knew this was coming. There’s been a lot of scrutiny of BlackRock. We’ve been sending some investigative requests. Other states have been sending investigative requests.
So I don’t think they were surprised at all.
Michael Patrick Leahy: What are you facing here? I mean, because look, you’re a Harvard Law School graduate and you know, what happens is big asset managers like BlackRock, they hire the best, the toniest, the most exclusive law firms in the world. They take the best of the best.
They’ll have a team of, you know, 30 people, right?
What are we going to see here?
Jonathan Skrmetti: Well, they’ve hired their local counsel. They got somebody really good to head up the local operation. I don’t know yet who’s going to be coming in nationally, but I’m sure it’s going to be one of the probably two or three best litigation firms in the world.
And they’re going to make our lives very, very difficult. I’ve no doubt they’re going to be making the toughest arguments they can make. They’re going to be doing everything they can to make our case difficult.
And I’m, I’m really glad that I’ve got some good fighters on my side, ready to go toe-to-toe with them.
Michael Patrick Leahy: I think everybody in Tennessee is cheering you on. And what I love about it, this is happening here in Williamson County, not in a federal courtroom in New York City.
We’ll have more when we get back.
We’re talking with Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, taking it to the guys at BlackRock in New York City.
We’ll be back after this.
This is The Tennessee Star Report. I’m Michael Patrick Leahy.
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