Wealthy oil and gas interests getting politicians to do their bidding: coming to a federal government near you.
This article was originally published in The American Prospect. Read on the original site here.
Trump’s inner circle is stacked with corporate lackeys, far-right influencers, and as Public Citizen described it, “Self-Enriching Grifters.” Many of them, though (somewhat) new to the national political spotlight, are all too familiar to observers of one state: Texas.
Texas has long been a bellwether for far-right politics, driven by a few central figures pulling the strings of power from their executive positions at oil and gas giants. They have funneled huge sums to policymakers in exchange for favorable treatment from the state.
Tim Dunn, the Billionaire Making Texas an Oil Haven
No other figure embodies this apparent pay-to-play schema as does billionaire Tim Dunn, the founder and chief executive officer of CrownQuest Operating, a Texas-based fracking company and one of the largest privately controlled oil producers in the world.
Dunn is the largest donor in the state of Texas, and the longtime vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a notorious policy shop with sweeping national influence. TPPF was so aligned with Rick Perry when he served as governor of Texas that it named a balcony in its headquarters in his honor.
Dunn’s relationship with Perry, and other state-based politicians who are “financially beholden” to him, has generated a massively beneficial dynamic for CrownQuest in particular, but the system has also been of use to other Texas oil and gas corporations and their executives. Few, though, have capitalized quite so well on it as has the pipeline company Energy Transfer and its founder, Kelcy Warren.
What is Energy Transfer?
Energy Transfer is a Texas-based company best known for owning the notorious Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and deploying excessive force against the environmental protestors and Land Defenders who opposed it.
Indeed, Energy Transfer is still in the midst of a retaliatory lawsuit against Greenpeace for its support of the Indigenous-led anti-DAPL movement. This legal tactic, known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, seeks to use corporate money and power to whittle down the public’s constitutional rights to free speech and protest. The case goes to trial in February, where Energy Transfer will seek a $300 million judgment, which would effectively bankrupt Greenpeace’s U.S. operations.
In addition to suppressing the climate movement, Energy Transfer is a serial polluter. A DeSmog investigation found that the company’s pipelines “released 3.6 million gallons of hazardous liquids, including 2.8 million gallons of crude oil,” in over 500 documented spills from 2002-2017. On average, that’s one spill every eleven days. According to Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker, Energy Transfer and its affiliates have incurred no less than $558,235,925 in environmental fines since 2000.
Despite this history, Energy Transfer continues to profit from its own deceit. For example, “in 2021, Energy Transfer and its executives profiteered $2.4 billion off of the February collapse of Texas’ electric grid, which resulted in the deaths of at least 246 Texans.”
Instead of holding the company accountable for one of the worst statewide disasters in history, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly steered scrutiny away from Energy Transfer and the other companies that profiteered off of the crisis. Why might he do that? Perhaps because Kelcy Warren, the company’s Chairman of the Executive Board, is one of Texas’, and Abbott’s, most generous donors.
As a result, Energy Transfer walked away from the disaster with billions, leaving ratepayers traumatized and looking forward to years of future debt repayments.
This is the Texas playbook working as designed; give corporations free rein—protected by their bought political allies—to hurt the public, and then make the public pay for the privilege of the pain.
Kelcy Warren, Trump’s Latest Oil and Gas Financier
Warren is the Executive Chairman of Energy Transfer’s board of directors and a co-founder of the company. Greenpeace has documented his connections to Donald Trump. Back in 2016, Warren donated $100,000 to Trump’s campaign and an additional $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration. Trump, for his part, reported owning between $500,000 and $1 million in shares of Energy Transfer in 2015, although his 2016 disclosures saw that number decline to between $15,000 and $50,000, and a Trump spokesperson claimed that he sold his shares in the company later that year.
Less than a week into Trump taking office in 2017, he signed an Executive Order allowing for DAPL construction, which had been blocked by outgoing-President Obama, to continue. Then, Trump nominated Perry, a board member of Energy Transfer from February 2015 to December 2016, to lead the Department of Energy. Perry returned to his position on the board just a month following his resignation from the DOE, in a move that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called “unethical,” given the company’s record of lobbying the agency while Perry ran it.
In 2019, Trump appointed Warren to the prestigious Kennedy Center Board, a position often reserved for high-profile loyalists of an administration. Warren, in turn, hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign in his home. The event reportedly raised $10 million from around 25 people. This came after Warren personally donated a massive $1.7 million to the Trump Victory Fund, which solicited funds for the Republican National Committee and for Trump’s 2020 re-election bid.
Trump, of course, lost the 2020 election, but Warren seems intent on making good on his investments this time around. And it’s already working.
In 2024, Warren once again co-hosted a fundraiser for Trump, this time aiming to raise money from oil and gas executives. This cycle, Warren numbered amongst Trump’s most significant donors from within the oil and gas industry and one of Trump’s top ten donors overall in the 2024 cycle, giving more than $5.5 million dollars as of last August. Warren also donated no less than $814,600 (the maximum amount allowed) to the Trump 47 Committee to help the President cover his massive legal fees.
Intersecting Spheres of Influence
Energy Transfer’s (and its affiliates’) fingerprints are already lurking in the background of many of the most significant spheres of influence defining Trump 2.0.
Doug Burgum, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Interior, famously helped shut down the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2017. Burgum, then governor of North Dakota, issued a mandatory evacuation order that “helped bring an end to the demonstrations.” Just an hour after police violently cleared the DAPL protest camp, Burgum signed four bills into law increasing criminal penalties for protestors and chilling Indigenous and environmentalist free speech. Burgum’s office also launched a website parroting oil company propaganda, including denials of well-documented instances of police violence at the protest site. After shutting down the protest, Energy Transfer donated $1,500 to Burgum in 2018, again in 2019, and $25,000 in 2020.
While Rick Perry is not currently reprising his role at Energy, he was a founding member of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), serving as the head of its Center for Energy Independence and chair of its Center for Energy & Environment in 2021.
Multiple AFPI alumni are involved in the Trump Administration. Linda McMahon, AFPI’s chair of the Board and Chair of AFPI’s Center for the American Worker, is Trump’s pick to head the Department of Education. Pam Bondi, AFPI’s chair of the Center for Litigation and the co-chair of its Center for Law and Justice, is Trump’s latest pick to lead the Department of Justice. Doug Collins, Chair of AFPI Georgia, is Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Though not listed as a staffer at the organization, Trump announced Burgum’s nomination to lead Interior at an AFPI event. The list goes on.
Brooke Rollins—AFPI’s President and CEO—was previously Perry’s general counsel. Notably, after her time in Perry’s office, Rollins went on to run Dunn’s own beloved Texas Public Policy Foundation for fifteen years, and boasted huge influence over Perry’s time in office while she was there.
Indeed, AFPI and TPPF meet at the intersection of Dunn’s money, politics and vision. Rollins and McMahon reportedly approached Dunn in 2020 with the original idea for AFPI. Within weeks, Dunn and other TPPF board members funded and registered the organization as a planning platform for recently jobless Trump alumni. From there, AFPI helped craft the second Trump administration. Rollins herself is now Trump’s pick to run the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Making America Texas
Other Texans have also been tapped to implement Trump’s agenda from sub-cabinet-level departments and independent agencies across the federal government. Keith Bass, the guy who got fired by the CIA for mismanagement, is now Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense’s healthcare systems as the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Aaron Reitz is Trump’s nominee to head the DOJ’s Office of Legal Policy. Reitz is a former staffer for both Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, where he spent his time undermining the right to abortion and attacking queer and trans folks. At DOJ, he will have even more opportunity to expand these attacks with the full resources and powers of the federal judiciary.
Others have also been tapped from Paxton’s office, including Paige Willey, Paxton’s former communications director, who Paxton credited with “championing” many of his office’s strategic priorities, including Paxton’s heinously cruel orientation towards “border security.” Ryan Baasch, a former Paxton Associate Deputy Attorney General, also personally argued some of the worst of that office’s actions, including when it tried to shut down El Paso-based nonprofit, Annunciation House. Both Baasch and Willey have been named to economic policy roles in the new Trump Administration.
This web of influence has landed Warren and Dunn with immense access to the wheels of power in the forthcoming Trump administration. We know how this influence will manifest; you need only look at Texas.