The Securities and Exchange Commission quietly put an end to one of the more troubling abuses of the Obama era a few days ago.

The agency sent a letter to Texas oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. saying it is ending its investigation of claims the company misled investors about risks climate change and greenhouse gas regulations posed to its business. The decision came after a review by the agency of more than 4.2 million pages of records, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The probe was launched in January 2016 under former SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, an Obama selection. The agency is now chaired by Jay Clayton, a Trump appointee.

The premise of the agency’s pursuit of Exxon was contrived. It was a cynical attempt to achieve through abuse of the regulatory process something President Barack Obama could not achieve in Congress. And it had a distinctly Orwellian flavor to it.

The probe surprised financial analysts by its unusual nature. The SEC questioned how Exxon valued its oil and gas reserves. More specifically, the SEC wanted to know why Exxon had not taken “impairment charges” reducing the value of its reserves to account for the impact of climate change and tougher regulations associated with it.

The idea that the SEC could divine this with any greater certainty than Exxon itself is absurd, but that was never the point. Politics, specifically climate politics and the Obama camp’s hatred of big oil, is what this was all about.

The Obama SEC wanted Exxon to accede to the administration’s worldview that climate change is both real and man-made, and that the world will quickly move away from carbon-based energy sources like oil and natural gas because of it. The SEC’s working theory was that Exxon was defrauding investors by not taking billions in write-downs on its oil and gas holdings in homage to Obama’s infallible insights.

Exxon was thus a climate change denier that must be appropriately punished and re-educated. This would send the necessary message to other oil and gas companies as well as the people who foolishly own their stocks. These reserves are worthless, because government will see to it that they are left in the ground.

In terms of fairly valuing Exxon’s stock, whose view has proved correct today? Exxon did, in fact, write down the value of some of its reserves in 2016, although that had more to do with the temporary collapse in oil prices after Saudi Arabia flooded the market.

But to the salient issue, how could the impact of shifting political policies ever be anything more than an educated guess for any company? Donald Trump is president now and the Obama regulatory regime has been shredded to an extent few people imagined. Auto mileage requirements imposed by Obama have been reversed and capped. West Coast fuel content requirements have been voided. And on it goes.

That the SEC probe was an exercise in political persecution of a politically disfavored industry is reflected in the fact that Democratic attorneys general in New York and Massachusetts are pressing ahead with their own pursuits of Exxon on the same theory. This, unfortunately, is all many attorneys general do these days – abuse the court system in attempts to short-circuit the democratic process.

Exxon is not a particularly sympathetic figure in this episode because it is an 800-pound gorilla more than able to defend itself. The problem is, it shouldn’t have to. This persecution by the Obama SEC is the stuff of banana republics, not great democracies. The fact we resemble the former with increasing frequency when the left has its way is a reality that should concern us all.