By Chris Horner
Senior Legal Fellow, Energy & Environment Legal Institute
As Appearing in the Washington Times

This week Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, leaves office, having resigned under the cloud of a cronyism and corruption scandal. A U.S. attorney has subpoenaed “records that are a catalog of Kitzhaber’s climate and economy-related initiatives,” centering on money given to Mr. Kitzhaber’s fiancee Cylvia Hayes. Ms. Hayes served a curious triple role of “first lady,” adviser to the governor on energy policy and well-compensated consultant for the “clean energy” industry.

Any such investigation must not stop at Oregon’s borders. This is not because the “clean energy” industry seems unique for its associated scandals in recent years, or the prevalence of wealthy Democratic donors getting even richer from it. Of course, some of those same supporters, such as Tom Steyer, provided Democrats a financial surge on a par with a longtime force, the teachers’ unions, in 2014, expressly for the purpose of advancing the “climate” agenda, transferring taxpayer money to uneconomic “clean energy” schemes…

On behalf of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, I obtained an 11-page email thread under Washington State’s freedom of information law. In it, we see how Mr. Kitzhaber’s office organized a campaign to promote the industry’s agenda, beginning with the California and Washington governors’ offices, a private environmentalist law firm and the White House.

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