Are you there Sheldon? It's me, Edmund.

[Trigger warning: People make mistakes. That doesn't make them criminals. They're not villains. But they are a problem if they hold positions of power. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's disastrous Senate hearing last week on "The Future of Electric Vehicles," which produced a fact-free training video for fossil fuel-funded legislators to obstruct the deployment of EVs across America, signals similar problems with his recent request to DOJ to investigate Big Oil and, more generally, his environmental porn model of climate action. With the game-changing prospect of a Harris-Walz administration leading genuine and just climate action, Senato Democrats must clean up the Big Oil corruption that did so much damage to the Obama and Biden administrations, so that we can begin clean in 2025.]

Contents:

• "The Scheme" (Supreme Court) video series.
• "Time to Wake Up" (climate change) video series
• House/Senate investigation of Big Oil greenwashing, and subsequent report to Department of Justice
• My 6-year Koch-MIT investigation, "How the Koch Brothers Captured MIT (2004-2024)" and outreach to Senator Whitehouse
• Key Findings from my investigation: Ernest Moniz, the Koch Brothers, and the Global Oil Cartel
• The Jeffrey Epstein Coverup
• The game-changing promise of Harris-Walz
• The Future of Carbon Capture Senate Hearing

YouTube Series 1: The Scheme

As the former Attorney General of Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse courageously prosecuted and convicted the mayor of Providence on RICO racketeering charges. So in his extraordinary YouTube series, "The Scheme," which documents the 20-year scheme by right wing billionaires to capture and control the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Whitehouse is an insider. An expert. He knows the players, their plans, and step by step he walks us through the scheme that they pioneered to capture the U.S. judicial process, and how they execute their priorities through proxies and front groups.

No one else has come close to the detail, the accracy, and the anger that Senator Whitehouse brings to this extraordinary series.

YouTube Series 2: Time To Wake Up

Senator Whitehouse has just purged nearly half of his 293 videos on the Climate Change crisis, "Time to Wake Up," and as far as I'm concerned he can keep going until all but two are gone.

• "Sen. Whitehouse delivers his final Time to Wake Up Climate Speech" (Jan 28, 2021), his extraordinary excoriation of Barack Obama for his failure to act on climate in 2009.
• "Sen. Whitehouse Returns to the Senate Floor to Deliver 280th ‘Time to Wake Up’ Speech" (Feb 2, 2022) and his prayer to Joe Biden, a year into Biden's term, that the president live up to his promises on climate action.

Environmental porn as climate action

I've watched 40-50 of Sen. Whitehouse's Time to Wake Up videos and scanned a bunch more and they all follow a model of climate of climate action that I call Environmental Porn. That is, a vivid description of the environmental damages that will happen if we fail to act, preferably report new data from the academic community, concluding with an emphatic, "Do Something!"

Senator Whitehouse, as a passionate climate activist and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, is one of the most power figures in the U.S. in regard to climate action. Who is he trying to wake up? What does he think they should do? Just as radical right wing billionaires are the target of his Supreme Court videos, the global oil cartel should have been the target of his Climate Change videos, so that he can walk us through, step by step, what they are doing to obstruct the transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

House/Senate Big Oil Investigation and DOJ Report

Senator Whitehouse and his House colleague, Congressman Jamie Rankin, recently dumped thousands of pages of documents into Merrick Garland's lap and said, "Big Oil lied about climate change 30-40 years ago. Please investigate and report back."

It is unimaginable to me that AG Garland will be able to do anything in regard to this request, and if he does, that the results will be timely and useful.

What I do know is that this strategy is the result of guidance Senator Whitehouse has received from his academic advisors, and that it reflects their own priorities as academics. Again, there are no villains here. No crimes. But nonetheless, in my view, the consequences have been disastrous.

In his RICO prosecution of Providence mayor Buddy Cianci, in his expose of the right wing scheme to capture the Supreme Court, he doesn't speak in generalities. Sen Whitehouse's academic advisors received their degrees and began their careers at MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. And instead of supporting in any way whatsoever my investigation of how the Kochs gained control first of MIT, they have instead kept the focus on the academic question of how Big Oil lied about climate change.

Basically, the House/Senate investigations over the past three years have been literature reviews to support academic careers of a few academics running academic think tanks. They can do what they want. But they mistaken their own priorities for climate action.

My conversation with Senate Whitehouse' Budget staff

This past Monday I spoke with two of Senator Whitehouse Budget Committee investigative staff, and I was demoralized by their complete indifference to my investigation and report.

They asked a single question: "Do I have email evidence to prove that the Koch Brothers funded the MIT Energy Initiative?"

When I said no, the conversation was effectively over for them.

I tried to explain the information I had learned over the six years of my investigation. I spoke to complete silence. Not a question, comment, sound of any kind. I asked a few questions, they answered them. Then said, "If you send a report, we'll read it."

Ernest Moniz, the Koch Brothers, and the global oil cartel

My investigation documents how the Koch Brothers conspired with future U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former CIA Director John Deutch in 2004, and gained the support of President elect Susan Hockfield.

When John Deutch, in partnership with Schlumberger and Cheniere Energy, advanced a rogue operation for MIT to develop the Skolkovo Institute of Science & Technology in order to provide Russian oligarchs with the skills and training that Russian engineers needed for the challenges of shale production in the world's largest shale gas repository (the Bazhenov Formation, Siberia), he also betrayed U.S. national security (for the second time) by including in the deal entrepreneurial partnerships with Russian weapon manufacturers.

This deal, supported by the Kochs and Corporation chair John Reed, led to the unexplained and premature resignation of Susan Hockfield.

The Kochs and Reed then appointed Schlumberger director "Leo" Rafael Reif as the new MIT president and, in December 2012, they rewrote the MIT bylaws to officially transfer power at MIT from the president, leading a non-profit research center, to the chair of the MIT Corporation, head of a for-profit oil&gas company with David and Charles Koch as its de facto CEOs.

The Jeffrey Epstein coverup

In the summer of 2019, as David Koch was dying of cancer and The New Yorker was investigating whistleblower reports of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein funding fraudulent research (The Food Computer, OpenAg) at the MIT Media Lab, the oil&gas interests, both people and companies, that were in control of MIT — the Koch Brothers, Schlumberger, Cheniere, Deutch, etc — engaged the Paul Weiss law firm to lead an investigation that protected their interests.

Like 'holocaust", "evil" is a word that should be used with extreme caution. But I don't hesitate to use the "evil" to describe the report that the MIT Corporation published on January 10, 2020. An extraordinary amount of corruption and criminality are buried inside it. And an equally extraordinary amount of disengagement and indifference were involved in its total success as a coverup of what has happened at MIT for the past 20 years.

Harris-Walz

Out of nowhere it seems, we have an extraordinary chance for recovery in the Democratic ticket of Harris and Walz. But if Big Oil corruption from the Biden administration follows them into the Harris administration, their hands will be tied, despite all their good intentions. Just as the Big Oil corruption in the Biden administration, now advising the Harris campaign, demanded that Kamala Harris retreat from her courageous ban on fracking, the same Biden leaders will demand the same concessions, the same compromises, the same lies that sustained fossil fuels through the past two Democratic administrations.

The Future of Carbon Capture Hearings

We urgently need the Senate to hold carbon capture hearings. But they cannot be another disaster like the Electric Vehicles hearings, which produced a promotional vehicle for Big Oil disruption and obstruction. Senate Democrats must do what they have failed to do for date: investigate their own Democrat colleagues, starting with Ernest Moniz, John Podesta, and Sally Benson. And that investigation must include subpoenas of all emails that reference either David or Charles Koch.

Polarization between Democrats and Republicans, exacerbated by Senator Whitehouse's one-sided attacks on Republican corruption, unfairly demonize American citizens who don't support all democratic policies. John Deutch betrayed U.S. national security to partner with Russian weapon manufacturers in order to Russian oil producers. This is the 'deep state' that republicans voters are talking about, and it is in complete control of U.S. energy policy and therefore, U.S. climate action.

We have an opportunity to break through the impasses that locks us in place, that hands victory to the same right wing cabal that has taken control of the U.S. justice system.

#investigateMIT #subpoenaMoniz