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house oversight committee
Dems Say Big Oil Execs Failing to Come Clean on Trump's $1 Billion Quid Pro Quo Offer
"The behavior of Donald Trump and the oil and gas industry has added to evidence of possible misconduct," said three U.S. lawmakers.
Sep 10, 2024
A trio of senior congressional Democrats on Tuesday admonished fossil fuel executives to comply with a request for "information regarding quid pro quo solicitations" from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who earlier this year promised to gut climate regulations if they donated $1 billion to his Republican presidential campaign.
In May, Trump reportedly told Big Oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida that he would sign executive orders and take other action to boost the fossil fuel industry if they raised nine figures for his campaign. Executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, and other corporations reportedly attended the dinner.
A May analysis by the green group Friends of the Earth Action found that the fossil fuel industry would reap an estimated $110 billion windfall from tax breaks alone under Trump's proposed policies—an 11,000% return on Big Oil's billion-dollar investment.
Following the revelation of Trump's quid pro quo offer, House Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to the head of the American Petroleum Institute—the leading Big Oil lobby—and the CEOs of eight companies seeking answers about whether they accepted what Raskin called "Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
Nearly four months later, the lawmakers are still awaiting satisfactory answers.
"Not only was your response to our inquiries insufficient; tellingly, none of the responses we have received to date refute the accuracy of the reporting, renewing our concern that Donald Trump is actively seeking to sell out American energy policy to the highest bidder," the trio wrote on Tuesday.
"In the weeks since our initial letters, the behavior of Donald Trump and the oil and gas industry has added to evidence of possible misconduct," the lawmakers continued. "Campaign finance records show that following Trump's quid pro quo solicitation at least one company made a significant contribution in support of Trump's presidential run."
"Specifically, on April 29, 2024, Continental Resources Inc. contributed $1 million to Make America Great Again, Inc.—a super PAC dedicated to Trump's reelection," they added. "Continental's CEO, Harold Hamm, who is also an informal adviser to Trump, has reportedly given $1.6 million to aid Trump's reelection so far this year, and he has raised millions more from independent oil producers operating in Texas and Alaska."
According to a Washington Postarticle published last month, Hamm's top priorities are "opening up more federal lands to drilling, easing the Endangered Species Act, and curbing numerous regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency."
During his first White House term, Trump rolled back regulations protecting the climate, environment, and biodiversity, resulting in increased pollution and premature deaths and fueling catastrophic planetary heating.
In addition to sounding the alarm over Trump's climate-wrecking policies, campaigners have expressed concerns about the GOP nominee's selection of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Like Trump, Vance is a climate denier. He also has strong ties to the fossil fuel industry, his top donor.
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Dems Want to Know If Trump DOJ Covered Up Alleged $10 Million Egyptian Bribe
"Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator."
Sep 03, 2024
Congressional Democrats on Tuesday launched an investigation in response to recent Washington Postreporting on a closed federal probe into whether Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi gave former U.S. President Donald Trump $10 million to illegally help his 2016 campaign.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Congressman Robert Garcia (Calif.), a leader on the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, revealed their investigation in a letter to Trump, the Republican nominee for the November presidential election.
In addition to generating suspicion about a cash bribe from el-Sisi, Raskin and Garcia wrote to Trump, "this detailed news report has also triggered serious speculation that your handpicked political appointees at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including Attorney General William Barr, subsequently blocked efforts by career prosecutors and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the political and financial corruption that has been described."
"Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president—and a current candidate for president—took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator," the pair continued, requesting that Trump turn over information necessary to assure the panel and the public that he never took money from the Egyptian leader or government.
"We are certain you can see how significant troubling questions still haunt our country about the origins of your $10 million campaign contribution."
The letter summarizes the Post's early August reporting, which was based on thousands of pages of government records and interviews with over two dozen people who spoke on the condition of anonymity and shared emails, texts, and other documents.
As the newspaper detailed: "Investigators identified a cash withdrawal in Cairo of $9,998,000—nearly identical to the amount described in the intelligence, as well as to the amount Trump had given his campaign weeks earlier. A key theory investigators pursued, based on intelligence and on international money transfers, was that Trump was willing to provide the fundsto his campaign in October 2016 because he expected to be repaid by Sisi, according to people familiar with the probe."
Michael Sherwin, the then-acting U.S. attorney who closed the case, told the Post that he stands by the decision. The Egyptian government, Trump campaign, Central Intelligence Agency, DOJ, FBI, U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C., and key individuals including Barr declined to answer the newspaper's questions, though some sent statements.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called the story "textbook Fake News," while Ayman Walash of Egypt's Foreign Press Center stressed that the DOJ probe ended without charges and said that "it is inappropriate to comment or refer to rulings issued by the judiciary system or procedures and reports taken by Justice Departments" in other nations.
Both the Post and the congressmen highlighted Trump's remarks and policies regarding Egypt and its leader, who seized power in 2013. Noting the Republican's meeting with el-Sisi shortly before the 2016 U.S. election, Raskin and Garcia wrote:
While others at the time "emphasized the importance of respect for rule of law and human rights to Egypt's future progress," you called President el-Sisi a "fantastic guy" and praised his tactics for taking "control" of Egypt. As president, you continued to praise President el-Sisi and drastically shifted U.S. policy in ways to benefit the reviled Egyptian leader. While calling President el-Sisi your "favorite dictator," you released $195 million in military aid in 2018 that the United States had previously withheld because of human rights abuses committed by the Egyptian government, and later released an additional $1.2 billion in military assistance.
"We are certain you can see how significant troubling questions still haunt our country about the origins of your $10 million campaign contribution, the source of any repayment, and the credible allegations that it was all funded with cash provided by President el-Sisi through his grim intelligence services," they added. "These questions are especially alarming given that the allegations appearing in The Washington Post are silhouetted against several proven patterns of corrupt practices exhibited by both the Egyptian government and by you, of course, as a convicted felon, fraudster, and corrupt politician."
As an example, the congressmen cited the corruption case of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). The Post reporting was published just weeks after a federal jury found the senator guilty of accepting bribes from three businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government. He finally resigned in mid-August.
Trump, in May, was convicted of 34 felony charges in New York over the falsification of business records related to hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election. He also faces cases at the federal level and in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his 2020 loss. Although a Trump-appointed judge recently dismissed another federal case related to his handling of classified materials, it could soon be revived by an appellate court.
Raskin is a longtime critic of Trump. He led the historic second impeachment of the ex-president and earlier this year launched a probe into the Republican's quid pro quo offer to Big Oil executives: $1 billion in campaign cash for killing climate policies. Some have even floated Raskin for U.S. attorney general if Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris beats Trump in November.
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AOC, Raskin Announce Bill to Rein in 'Captured and Corrupted' Supreme Court
"A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Jun 12, 2024
To rein in what he called "the highest court in the land with the lowest ethical standards," U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin on Tuesday evening joined Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in announcing plans to introduce legislation to bar Supreme Court justices from accepting gifts worth more than $50, matching a ban for members of Congress.
Announced after a roundtable discussion with several legal experts on the pattern of ethics violations at the court, the legislation would be the latest attempt by progressive lawmakers to constrain right-wing justices including Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Raskin (D-Md.) and Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped lead the roundtable discussion held by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Tuesday afternoon, where topics included right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow's funding of luxury vacations for Thomas—which the justice officially disclosed last week after it was first reported by ProPublica last year—and a fishing trip taken by Alito and paid for by hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who later had business before the court.
Speaking on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" after the roundtable, Raskin said that with the Supreme Court remaining "the only governmental officials in the land who are not governed by a binding ethics code," he and Ocasio-Cortez decided to introduce legislation "that the whole country will be able to understand immediately and intuitively."
"We want a $50 gift ban for U.S. Supreme Court justices," said Raskin. "They make $300,000 a year. Pay for your own lunch and pay for your own vacation."
Last fall, the Supreme Court introduced an ethics code for justices for the first time, but court reform groups have criticized the fact that it lacks an enforcement mechanism.
At the roundtable discussion on Tuesday, Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability, told Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) that the ethics code has "no teeth or function. It just serves as a way to get people to stop complaining and keep with the status quo."
The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), has called on Alito in recent weeks to recuse himself from cases involving the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump, following reporting that Alito's family displayed two flags that have been embraced by the "Stop the Steal" movement, which baselessly claims Trump was the rightful winner of the presidential election.
Alito has refused to recuse himself, as has Thomas, whose wife supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump. Last year, Hayes noted in his interview with Raskin and Ocasio-Cortez, Alito said Congress "has no ability to regulate [Supreme Court justices] whatsoever."
Ocasio-Cortez warned Alito's position that the judiciary is unaccountable to the other co-equal branches of government would pave "the path to authoritarianism, tyranny, and abuse of power."
"It's not a question of if Congress has jurisdiction and power over the Supreme Court, it is, 'What power are we going to exercise in order to rein in a fundamentally unaccountable and rogue court?'" said Ocasio-Cortez.
At the roundtable, the congresswoman said that the court has been "delegitimizing itself through its conduct," including the latest revelations regarding Alito, who was caught on tape at an event this month agreeing with an undercover documentary filmmaker that the U.S. needs to return to "a place of godliness."
The tape was released Monday, ahead of an expected Supreme Court ruling on whether the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, an abortion pill, should be revoked. The case was brought by conservative Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom.
"A group of anti-democratic billionaires with their own ideological and economic agenda has been working one of the three co-equal branches of government," Ocasio-Cortez said at the roundtable. "Americans are losing fundamental rights in the process, reproductive healthcare, civil liberties, voting rights, the right to organize, clean air and water because the court has been captured and corrupted by money and extremism."
Last month the congresswoman called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to open a formal investigation into the display of the two pro-insurrection flags at Alito's homes.
Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin said Tuesday evening that while it is "great" that progressive members of the House minority are addressing the tools they have to hold the Supreme Court accountable, "it's embarrassing the Senate Judiciary chair isn't demonstrating half the interest or effort."
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