The largest benefactor of the Interior Department’s most recent illegal wind buyout is an Australian-American billionaire whose private equity firm will receive $900 million in exchange for a stake in a methane gas terminal in Louisiana. The near-billion-dollar buyout comes after the same billionaire gave a $1 million bribe to the originator of the deal.
At issue is the recent deal by the Department of the Interior with RWE, a German energy company that had been set to build several wind farms off the US coast.
Interior illegally gave $1.22 billion to RWE to get them to stop building these projects, and RWE will instead put $900 million of that money into purchasing a stake in a methane gas terminal in Louisiana and $300 million into building dirty methane gas turbines for data centers, which are making electricity both more expensive and dirtier.
It’s part of a pattern of wasteful spending by the Interior Department, which has so far spent around $4 billion of taxpayer money on canceling wind projects in order to starve America of energy and raise electricity prices.
This money has been spent illegally – not only is it coming out of a government fund that can’t be used for this purpose, but the government cannot haphazardly cancel energy projects on the outer continental shelf.
But it turns out the RWE deal is even more nefarious than we previously thought, as it has now been reported that the $900 million will go to buying out a portion of the stake owned by Stonepeak, a private equity fund owned by Australian-American billionaire Michael Dorrell. The project is considered riskier than others, and Stonepeak seems to be looking to reduce its financial exposure.
Dorrell owns property near Mar-A-Lago and is a member of Mr. Trump’s private club. He has bragged publicly about meeting the former reality TV host.
Adding to the corruption, it turns out that Dorrell isn’t just one of Mr. Trump’s neighbors, but he also gave a $1 million bribe to Mr. Trump in order to attend the rally, headlined by a speaker who gave two unambiguous Nazi salutes, which Trump held as part of his inauguration (to an office he cannot legally hold).
It seems that this relatively small bribe has produced pretty massive results, as with other bribes given to the same corrupt individual, both from US and foreign sources (though at least one of those bribes didn’t go so well).
Political bribery has been known to be an efficient way for corporations to make money, particularly so since the US “Supreme” Court opined in Citizens United v FEC that bribery should be legal.
Various analyses have suggested that the average return on investment from political bribes (sometimes called “lobbying”) is anywhere between 22,000% and 104,000%.
But Mr. Trump has been more brazen in accepting and acting on direct bribes than most. And here is just the latest example: a transaction where he receives $1 million, and illegally gives that person $900 million of your money, with the (desired) side effect of raising your electricity bills and restricting your energy supply.
However, the bribes may not work out in the long term. States have already sued and threatened further lawsuits over these wind buyout plans, and Democrats in Congress are stating their intention not to allow these wasteful, illegal deals to go through (incidentally, click here to register to vote in this November’s midterms). Jared Huffman of California’s 2nd district was particularly clear, telling energy companies that “you better tell your shareholders that we are coming for that money.”
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