Scott Walter’s Written Testimony to Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights
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Oral Testimony to the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights
Senator Ted Cruz, chairman
Hearing on “Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare
Against American Energy Dominance”
Scott Walter
President, Capital Research Center
June 25, 2025
Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the honor of testifying. I’m president of the Capital Research Center, where we study special interest groups.
It’s no accident, as the Marxists say, that China has deep ties to the environmentalist movement. Whatever their intentions, radical climate activists advocate policy after policy that objectively strengthens China and weakens America—whether it’s hindering our production of energy, boosting China’s energy resilience, or making our supply chains dependent on Chinese inputs. As the report by State Armor I cited documents, the Chinese Communist Party “has every incentive to support climate activism in America.”
Unfortunately, as I also document, China finds willing partners in activist groups like the Rocky Mountain Institute, the California China Climate Institute, and Energy Foundation China. The Energy Foundation scheme is not subtle. It’s headed by a former influential Chinese government official and sends money to activists at groups like the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It also sends money to activists in universities like Berkeley, UCLA, and Harvard.
But foreign nationals in China aren’t the only ones who attack our energy independence and threaten to make it harder for working-class Americans to heat and cool their homes and drive their cars and trucks. Billionaires around the world add to the threat.
In Australia, the billionaire Andrew Forrest works with American tort lawyers and groups like the Sierra Club and the Center for Climate Integrity to put a major U.S. energy company out of business through lawfare that bypasses the democratic process. A British billionaire, Sir Christopher Hohn, also funds the Center for Climate Integrity, as well as law-breaking radicals at Extinction Rebellion.
Then there’s the biggest foreign national billionaire working to manipulate America’s politics: Hansjörg Wyss, who’s poured over $650 million into the American Left. Recipients have included Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, ClimateWorks, and the Minority witness’s employer, Public Citizen. But Wyss is best known for giving $278 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) operated by Arabella Advisors[i] and called by the Atlantic, “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic [Party] dark money.”[ii] Sixteen Thirty passes along tens of millions of dollars to the League of Conservation Voters and other environmental groups. Then there’s the New Venture Fund, to which Wyss has given $82 million and which is also operated by Arabella. They run the largest “dark money” network in the country on either side. New Venture has donated over $1 million to Mr. Arkush’s Public Citizen, and it also runs the Collective Action Fund. That group pays the for-profit law firm Sher Edling to sue energy companies on behalf of states like Rhode Island and cities like Baltimore, in hopes judges will force policies on our country that majorities of Democrats and Republicans oppose, policies that should be resolved through the political process, by voters and their elected representatives, not by private lawyers and their ideologically motivated funders.
Climate lawfare in America is also funded by homegrown billionaires, many with the same last name: Foundation. Hewlett and Rockefeller philanthropies stand out, joined by many more, like Ford and MacArthur, who provide a handful of climate lawfare groups a half-billion dollars a year.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg supports lawfare by paying to install activists in state attorneys general offices, hoping they’ll sue energy companies and achieve policy changes they can’t win through democratic legislatures. So far they’re mostly losing in the courts, too. The New York Attorney General’s case was dismissed with prejudice.
Climate lawfare raises ethics issues, too. Contingency fees for firms like Sher Edling presume they’re taking a risk, but are they if they have prior funding? Did these firms disclose that funding to government clients? If the government clients knew, did they disclose the funding to the public?
Another ethics problem: The Climate Judiciary Project runs “educational” programs for judges about climate change and climate suits. One observer calls it an effort by the climate tort movement to brief judges on the plaintiffs’ cases with supposedly neutral information, yet the speakers come from the plaintiffs’ witnesses and amicus brief filers. This effort to capture courts deserves your oversight.
If the public knew climate lawfare’s cost and its ties to foreign influence, they’d be outraged. I hope this hearing begins to reveal the truth.
Thank you.
[i] The New York Times describes Arabella’s nonprofit empire as “an opaque network managed by a Washington consulting firm” that has “funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through a daisy chain of groups supporting Democrats and progressive causes. The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money, and Arabella’s network is a leading vehicle for it on the left.” Ken Vogel, “Top Bidder for Tribune Newspapers Is an Influential Liberal Donor,” New York Times, April 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/business/media/wyss-tribune-company-buyer.html.
[ii] Emma Green, “The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of,” The Atlantic, November 2, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/11/arabella-advisors-money-democrats/620553/.
