The Pernicious Influence of Billionaire Funds on US Energy

It has been an open secret for years now that big foundations funded by billionaire families like the Gates, Getty, and Rockefeller clans have played a big role in funding the various climate alarmist campaigns to vilify so-called “fossil fuels.”  Lesser known until recently is the role these billionaire foundations play in convincing various government entities to travel down the same path.

Fox News reported this week that several billionaire interests, led by the Rockefeller Family Fund, put pressure on the New York Attorney General’s office during 2015 to target ExxonMobil with a subpoena for records related to an investigation into the company’s early research related to global warming. A series of leaked emails between Lee Wasserman, long-time director for the RFF, and then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s office first pitched the idea in early 2015.  Schneiderman ultimately responded to the pressure, sending an initial subpoena to ExxonMobil in November that same year.

The RFF’s involvement in the push to pursue ExxonMobil extended into influencing and paying for media coverage. In September, 2015, Inside Climate News published the first in a series of articles under what it called its “Exxon Knew” series. The RFF funded that effort via multi-million-dollar grants to ICN and its parent, Lost Light Projects, as reported in The Daily Caller in 2016. In October that same year, RFF grants were also behind a series of articles jointly published by the Los Angeles Times and the Columbia School of Journalism, demonizing ExxonMobil.