Exxon says it lost emails from Tillerson’s alias account
Exxon Mobil admitted in Manhattan Supreme Court Wednesday that it lost a year’s worth of emails from the alias account used by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he was the company’s CEO.
Tillerson — whose middle name is Wayne and went by the alias “Wayne Tracker” in the sensitive emails to company board members — is among those being investigated by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for allegedly deceiving investors about Exxon’s scientific research on climate-change impact.
Exxon lawyers blamed the email loss on computer issues, but state senior enforcement counsel John Oleske called Exxon’s revelation a “bombshell.”
Tillerson sent the emails between 2008 and 2015. Although Exxon lawyers admit initially being unable to recover the “Wayne Tracker” emails from September 5, 2014 to September 16, 2015, they claimed in a court filing that nine-months-worth of the lost emails have subsequently been recovered.
Judge Barry Ostrager ordered Exxon to deliver sworn statements and records from its staffers responsible for monitoring the “Wayne Tracker” emails, so state investigators could determine how they were lost.