Ted Boutrous made a six-figure donation to Biden and co-led a fundraiser whereas working for Chevron to get local weather change legal responsibility lawsuits thrown out.
Chevron’s lead legal professional in its protection in opposition to local weather legal responsibility lawsuits has donated greater than 100 thousand {dollars} to President Biden’s re-election marketing campaign and helped increase cash for the president at a glitzy Los Angeles fundraiser.
Ted Boutrous, a companion on the regulation agency Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is at the moment representing the oil big because it calls on the U.S. Supreme Court docket to dam dozens of lawsuits from cities and states that might maintain it responsible for billions of {dollars} in local weather change-related damages. Boutrous has additionally labored for Chevron on different circumstances, together with its profitable marketing campaign to overturn a 2016 ban on oil and gasoline improvement that was handed by voters of Monterey County, California, and has represented different oil corporations together with ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips in local weather legal responsibility circumstances over time.
Earlier this yr, Boutrous petitioned the Supreme Court docket on behalf of Chevron, together with a number of different oil corporations, to take up two circumstances introduced by town and county of Honolulu in opposition to itself and different massive oil corporations in 2020. The businesses are in search of to have the courtroom toss out rulings from the Hawaii Supreme Court docket that discovered the businesses had deceptively marketed fossil fuels whereas concealing that they knew they might exacerbate world warming and its impacts. Boutrous and the opposite oil corporations’ attorneys argued that federal regulation prohibits states and cities from suing corporations for harms brought on by interstate and worldwide greenhouse gasoline emissions.
“The stakes on this case couldn’t be larger,” the petitioners instructed the courtroom in February. “Over two dozen circumstances have been filed by numerous States and municipalities throughout the nation in search of to impose untold damages on vitality corporations for the bodily and financial results of local weather change […] These circumstances current a critical risk to one of many Nation’s most significant industries.”
The oil corporations not too long ago obtained a lift from 19 Republican attorneys common, all members of the Republican Attorneys Basic Affiliation (RAGA), who filed a movement in late Could calling on the Supreme Court docket to dam local weather lawsuits from California, Rhode Island, and different states, arguing that they’re in search of “energy to dictate the way forward for the American vitality business.” Twenty Republican attorneys common additionally wrote to the Supreme Court docket in April urging it to facet with the oil corporations and take up the Honolulu case.
The state local weather lawsuits, which declare that oil corporations deceived the general public for many years in regards to the risks of fossil fuels, are seen by many local weather activists as vital instruments for holding the business accountable. Boutrous and the fossil gas business argue that the lawsuits are makes an attempt by activists and native governments to take management of federal vitality coverage. In a current webinar with the conservative Federalist Society, Boutrous argued that these pursuits are trying to undermine pro-fossil gas manufacturing insurance policies of the federal authorities.
“You see the Biden administration, the secretary of state, calling for vitality manufacturing to guard our nation,” Boutrous mentioned. “So, I believe, if you take a look at the doctrines we’re counting on, the extraordinary nature of those circumstances, it truly is a play for personal attorneys, funded by numerous foundations and the like, working with municipalities and states to grab management of federal vitality coverage and to vary how we eat vitality.”
The oil business leans closely Republican in its political giving, and Chevron specifically has donated thousands and thousands to Republican tremendous PACs, however Boutrous is supporting the Democrats.
In two donations–one in December 2023 and one in March 2024–Boutrous donated $110,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee for Biden, the Democratic Nationwide Committee, and state Democratic Social gathering teams, based on Federal Election Fee information.
In December 2023, Boutrous and his spouse co-chaired or co-hosted a Los Angeles fundraiser for President Biden. Co-chairs of the occasion had been anticipated to boost $500,000 for Biden. The president and First Girl Jill Biden had been in attendance on the fundraiser, as had been Nancy Pelosi, billionaire director Steven Spielberg, and actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner.
