Biden took checks from left-wing climate activists who pressured him to halt LNG exports

 ByGabe Kaminsky - March 4, 2024 6:00 am

President Joe Biden received a financial boost from staffers for influential left-wing climate activist groups that later pressured the U.S. government to pause new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals, records show.

In recent years, the Rockefellers and philanthropy of ex-Democratic New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined deep-pocketed nonprofit organizations in bankrolling a sprawling anti-LNG initiative that helped propel the Biden administration to halt LNG exports, a decision in January that policy experts and lawmakers warn could embolden foreign adversaries such as Russia. Top employees for roughly half a dozen entities behind this successful pressure campaign wired large sums to Biden in 2020, with thousands of dollars also coming in to support his 2024 reelection bid, according to documents on file with the Federal Election Commission.

That the activists behind the anti-LNG campaign doubled as donors to Biden could lead to Republicans further pressing for investigations into both his administration’s LNG export pause and ties to green energy groups. In some cases, the White House has either hired or sought to nominate environmental attorneys linked to the climate pressure groups. High-powered lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of Biden climate envoy John Podesta, stands to benefit from the pause based on his recent roster of clients, including Golden Pass LNG, co-owned by the state-owned QatarEnergy petroleum company in Doha.

Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign declined to comment and pointed the Washington Examiner to the White House. The White House declined to comment on the LNG pause and referred the press inquiry to the Energy Department, which did not respond.

“It’s a policy that hurts American jobs and American global energy security, but does nothing for climate and the environment,” said Brenda Shaffer, a professor for the Naval Postgraduate School and energy expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “This whole radicalism against natural gas is something that totally benefits China because the main source of methane emissions is not from natural gas, but from agriculture — especially rice cultivation — which China leads on.”

To many foreign policy experts, Biden’s LNG pause came as a shock and couldn’t have come at a worse time. Tensions in the Middle East have dramatically risen following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, which counts one of its key financial backers as major LNG exporter Qatar. The United States exported more LNG in 2023 than any other country and is also the largest oil and gas producer in the world. And from a national security perspective, experts worry it’s a clear win for Russia, which is also a leading LNG exporter and continues its war against the United States ally of Ukraine.

Armed with the critical backing of Rockefeller Family Fund, a public charity formed by business magnate John D. Rockefeller’s heirs, a little-known initiative called the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas was wielded by left-wing activists to target LNG, the Wall Street Journal reported. The project was used to cut checks to allies and circulated a memo in 2019, one year after its founding, to gauge interest among other groups in challenging the LNG industry. It also scored cash from billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz, a Democrat whose private foundation is deeply invested in Chinese funds.

Personnel for Rockefeller Family Fund, its affiliated Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bloomberg Philanthropies charity directed roughly $60,000 combined to support Biden’s 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns, records show. Specifically, the contributors have included Rockefeller Family Fund president Lee Wasserman, who reportedly helped coordinate a New York state government investigation into oil giant Exxon Mobil, the charity’s associate director Lisa Guide, deputy director Roxanne Stachowski, and associate director Julie Fernandes.

Valerie Rockefeller is a Biden donor, among others who disclosed their employer as Rockefeller Brothers Fund to the Federal Election Commission. The independent agency’s database lists 31 donations to Biden from people at Bloomberg Philanthropies, including government innovations programs head James Anderson, environmental program head Antha N. Williams, lawyer Teresa Down, and Sarah Brennan, now associate director for Rockefeller Family Fund and working on “climate philanthropy, with a focus on oil and gas,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

Just days after Biden announced the LNG pause, Brennan celebrated it and said the decision was “the result of a sustained four-year push that built upon years of opposition to gas exports by community groups and lawyers.” She also told environmental groups in an email, “The White House recognized the power [of] this campaign,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Biden White House notably hired an attorney in 2021 named David Hayes to be special assistant to the president for climate policy after his three-year stint as director of an environmental center at New York University Law School that Bloomberg Philanthropies launched in 2017. Bloomberg-funded lawyers at the center have been brought on by state attorneys general offices to target the fossil fuels industry, including in New York, where Wasserman of Rockefeller Family Fund helped coordinate a major Exxon Mobil investigation that sparked dozens of current climate lawsuits.

Other staffers for groups that backed the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas chipped in to boost Biden to the tune of at least $93,100 combined, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of campaign finance disclosures.

Much of that sum is thanks to Charles Zegar and Merryl Snow Zegar, whose family foundation sent $500,000 to the Rockefeller Family Fund in 2022 for the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas, tax forms show. Charles Zegar and Meryl Snow Vegar personally donated more than $80,000 in 2020 to help elect Biden.

The Zegar Family Foundation disclosed on its most recently filed tax forms that it was sitting on more than $250 million in assets at the close of 2022. It also transferred $1.75 million combined to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a charity with offices in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Then there’s ClimateWorks Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization working “to end the climate crisis by amplifying the power of philanthropy” with a war chest of roughly $402 million. Biden’s 2020 election bid received support from Susan Cook, Rebecca Dell, Gretchen Rau, and Meredith Alcala from ClimateWorks, which has pumped at least $24 million combined since 2018 into the coffers for Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, according to tax records.

Biden’s 2020 campaign also pocketed cash from personnel for PennFuture, an LNG critic and nonprofit group formerly called Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future. PennFuture received grants in recent years through the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas “to support policy work challenging fracked gas and petrochemical subsidies and buildout,” according to Rockefeller Family Fund.

The San Francisco-based Sandler Foundation also backed the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas. Its grants director Sergio Knaebel cut a $500 check to Biden in 2020 and sits on the board of the left-wing climate group Earthjustice, which applauded the Biden administration for pausing LNG exports after it lobbied on the issue. Earthjustice employees contributed roughly $55,000 to Biden’s campaign or joint fundraising committee in 2020 combined, federal disclosures show.

Longtime EarthJustice legislative director Jessica Ennis was hired by the Biden White House in April 2022 to be public engagement director for its Council on Environmental Quality. However, Ennis departed last August to become managing director for Invest in our Future, an ambitious new climate group.

As Invest in our Future crafts plans to help “catalyze $1 trillion in public and private investment toward a clean-energy transition,” it enjoys support from the likes of the Zegar Family Foundation and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy.

According to documents obtained through a public records request by the Government Accountability and Oversight watchdog group and first shared with the Washington Examiner, Invest in our Future is even funding staff positions to advance the climate agenda in the office of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI).

But Invest in Our Future is technically not a stand-alone organization.

Rather, it’s a project of RF Catalytic Capital, a charitable fund managed by the Rockefeller Foundation, which pledged $20 million last September to Invest in our Future.

“The Rockefellers fund the activists to issue demands, the media groups to promote the demands, and the staff in the political offices to implement the demands,” Chris Horner, a lawyer for Government Accountability & Oversight, told the Washington Examiner.

“It’s a layered cake,” in the eyes of Horner.