Michael Bloomberg has funded officials in attorney general offices in at least 10 states nationwide
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is investigating an initiative housed at New York University and backed by billionaire climate activist Michael Bloomberg that hires and pays the salaries of top officials in state attorney general offices nationwide, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Bloomberg helped found the New York University School of Law’s State Energy & Environmental Impact Center in 2017 and, through his nonprofit Bloomberg Philanthropies, provided the center seed grants worth $5.6 million. Since then, the center has placed climate fellows in attorney general offices in Washington, D.C., and at least 10 states nationwide, including Minnesota, New York, and Wisconsin. It has exclusively hired fellows to work for Democratic attorneys general.
On Thursday, Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) sent letters to Bethany Davis Noll, the impact center’s executive director, and Patricia Harris, the CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies. Comer raised ethics concerns about the fellowship, which he said “undermines faith” in the American legal system, and demanded the two leaders provide relevant documents and communications.
The investigation is part of the Oversight Committee’s efforts to uncover how powerful left-wing interest groups influence federal and state climate actions. Comer has previously investigated groups that coordinated with former climate czar John Kerry to effectuate policies targeting coal power, groups that received billions of dollars from the Biden EPA to oversee green energy projects, and a prominent climate group that boasts ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“The circumstances surrounding the State Impact Center raise questions as to whether participating state attorneys general are acting on independent judgement to best serve the interests of their states’ citizens,” Comer wrote in his letters, which were first obtained by the Free Beacon. “The Bloomberg-NYU program effectively offers states partisan money from a billionaire to carry out official functions of their offices.”
Comer’s letters cite a recent Free Beacon report uncovering how NYU impact center fellow Lauren Cullum—who was placed in the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia as its special assistant attorney general—has been behind a number of high-profile climate-related legal actions. Cullum has represented the district in four environmental lawsuits and co-authored more than two dozen comment letters pushing for more federal climate regulations.
That report further noted that the impact center’s advisory council includes the CEO of a major wind energy developer and the vice president of green energy industry group the American Clean Power Association. Green energy interests stand to gain from the state-level work conducted by NYU impact center fellows, who have taken legal steps to protect Biden-era regulations while targeting Trump administration policies.
While the center and attorneys general who participate in the fellowship program argue the arrangement is nonpartisan, legal, and in compliance with state ethics rules, experts have expressed concern that it decreases government independence and appears to be part of Bloomberg’s broader agenda to target the oil and gas industry.
Bloomberg, Comer wrote in his letters, “disguises his donations as ‘philanthropy'” and uses the impact center as “a mechanism for him to skirt legislative bodies and effect partisan policy.”
“The Bloomberg-NYU partisan agenda will likely hurt working-class Americans in the name of the partisan globalist climate-agenda,” he added. “The average American household will pay the cost of this destructive agenda in the form of subsidies and regulations, fewer energy options, taxes to fund federal agencies’ legal defense, and higher utility bills.”
Bloomberg has devoted a sizable portion of his fortune to environmental initiatives targeting fossil fuels.
The State Energy & Environmental Impact Center and Bloomberg Philanthropies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
