by Misty Severi
Two House Democrats referred Energy Secretary Christopher Wright to the Justice Department for prosecution in a letter published Wednesday, alleging that he lied to Congress under oath about climate funding. Wright is the 17th person to hold that cabinet position.
Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Gabe Amo, D-R.I., accused Wright of lying when he testified in June that billions in climate-related funding were not canceled because it would have largely gone to Democratic states.
“Secretary Wright flatly denied that partisan politics lay behind the termination decisions,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote. “He testified that ‘no decisions, no decisions were made on politics’ and that the award terminations ‘weren’t’ based on how states had voted in the 2024 presidential election. But that was not true.”
The lawmakers highlighted that the Department of Energy’s deputy general counsel stipulated in a federal lawsuit related to the same award cancellations that “the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
Wright accused of “an act of political retaliation”
Wright has stated that the timing of the announcement of the grant cancellations might have been for political reasons, but that the decisions for the grants themselves were not political. According to The Los Angeles Times, the Department of Energy has denied the allegations and said Wright’s statements were correct.
“Secretary Wright lied to the Committee with his statements, which sought to prevent us from learning the truth: that the October award terminations were an act of political retaliation,” the lawmakers wrote.
“In doing so, he violated 18 USC §1001, which bars individuals from making “any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” to Congress. We have no choice but to refer Secretary Wright to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution in this matter,” they added.
The funding cancellations impacted projects in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Vermont, which all went to former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
“Referring a Cabinet Secretary for potential prosecution is not a step we take lightly. It is a weighty thing to assert that a Cabinet Secretary lied to Congress. We do not treat that assertion as a trivial matter, and we do not use those words carelessly. But the facts of the situation are clear and undeniable. As those facts have met the criminal elements of 18 U.S.C §1001, we refer this matter to the Department of Justice. We request that DOJ review this matter expeditiously and with the utmost seriousness, and if warranted, seek to bring criminal charges against Secretary Wright,” the lawmakers wrote.
An Energy Department spokesperson maintained the secretary’s viewpoint, telling The Hill that “none of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.”
“The Secretary’s statements in his testimony are correct,” the spokesperson added.
The decision on whether to prosecute Wright will be made by the Department of Justice.
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Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
