We’re being subpoenaed. Of all the things I expected to deal with when I became Executive Director here at our young climate campaign 350.org, this was pretty low on the list. But as the saying goes, “When you mess with Exxon...you’re going to get investigated.”

Six months ago, 350.org joined with other environmental groups to start raising awareness about a series of pieces published in InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times that revealed how ExxonMobil had known about climate change as early as the 1970s. Instead of warning the public, the company launched a decades-long misinformation campaign and doubled down on its production of fossil fuels. It was a story that mirrored the case against Big Tobacco, but this time it wasn’t just our lungs at stake, but the entire planet.

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The articles set off a bombshell, or better yet, a starting gun. Our team at 350.org immediately got to work to bring public attention to this important issue (no small task in the era of Kardashian and Trump). We sent out online petitions calling for a Department of Justice investigation. We projected #ExxonKnew on the side of a meeting of Attorneys General. We hosted a trial of “The People vs. ExxonMobil” at the Paris Climate Talks. We even talked to other environmental groups about the campaign.

That last one is what got us the brunt of Exxon’s allies ire. Little did we know, but according to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the climate-change-denying chairman of the House Science Committee, environmental groups talking amongst themselves amounts to the type of vast left-wing conspiracy that is a threat to freedom everywhere. This spring, Smith sent us, seven other environmental groups, and the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York, letters demanding that we hand over all of our internal communications as well as our efforts to petition the government related to our work to explore what Exxon was saying and doing. This helpless corporation’s rights were being trampled upon, he thundered. Our free speech, freedom of association and ability to petition the government rights under the First Amendment didn’t seem to be of much concern.

We’ve continued to deny Smith’s request for the obvious reason: it’s ridiculous. a single Republican Committee chairman (even if he can corral some Republican colleagues without any input from Democratic members) lack the authority to demand documents from any non-profit of his choosing, but this sort of overreach sets a dangerous precedent. Just like the police shouldn’t be able to barge into your home without a warrant, Congress shouldn’t be able to peer into your inbox with no limit and without proper cause. We have nothing to hide--most of our emails to one another are about things like how to plan scuba diver protests blaming Exxon for bleaching coral reefs--but we’ll continue to resist this subpoena out of the important principles of checking government power and protecting First Amendment rights.

This Wednesday, Rep. Smith will be holding a hearing with hand-picked legal scholars who will likely testify that our campaign against Exxon is an attack on its “free speech” and Smith has every right to subpoena us and hold us in contempt. But we also know what the hearing is really about: distracting the public from the revelations about all that Exxon knew by turning this into a debate about the company’s First Amendment rights (such as they exist) at the expense of those same rights as to others. It’s a play right of the Big Tobacco textbook: Philip Morris and other companies argued that inquiries about whether they knew cigarettes caused cancer were violations of their free speech.

Sadly for Exxon and its friend Chairman Smith, we’re not so easily distracted. Back in 2011, we and others grabbed onto the Keystone XL pipeline like a dog with a bone and couldn’t be shaken for four years until President Obama ultimately rejected the project. Right before Smith’s hearing, we’ll be hosting a press conference of our own with a pledge to redouble our efforts to make Exxon explain its misinformation campaign and that of their front groups like the American Petroleum Institute, who continue to try and mislead the public about the threat of climate change (although Jon Oliver seemed to get the better of them on that one).

May Boeve is Executive Director of 350.org