'Mighty damn corrupt': Senate likely to investigate Trump’s 'quid pro quo' with oil barons

Former President Donald Trump recently made a controversial proposal to a gathering of oil executives and lobbyists at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida: favorable policy in exchange for $1 billion in campaign cash.

Now, it looks as if the U.S. Senate may launch an official inquiry into the ex-president.

That's according to the New Republic's Greg Sargent, who spoke to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about Trump's recent entreaty to the oil industry. Whitehouse said it was "highly likely" that the Senate Budget Committee would investigate the former president over his brazen offer.

"The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’" Whitehouse said, adding that he was also concerned about a series of proposed executive orders oil lobbyists drafted for Trump and to have ready to sign on day one should he win a second term in November.

"Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt."

READ MORE: 'Undisguised corruption': Critics slam Trump for 'selling the White House' to Big Oil

Billionaire oil magnate Harold Hamm arranged the Mar-a-Lago event, which the Washington Post reported was designed to allow for the fossil fuel industry to be able to bring concerns over environmental regulations directly to Trump.

At the meeting, Trump reportedly promised to overhaul President Joe Biden's policies relating to electric vehicles and wind energy.

"The contrast between the two candidates on climate policy could not be more stark. Biden has called global warming an 'existential threat,' and over the last three years, his administration has finalized more than 100 new environmental regulations aimed at cutting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, restricting toxic chemicals, and conserving public lands and waters," wrote the Post's Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow.

"In comparison, Trump has called climate change a 'hoax,' and his administration weakened or wiped out more than 125 environmental rules and policies over four years."

Whitehouse, who chairs the Budget Committee, said Trump's proposal to oil executives was "practically an invitation to ask more questions." He added that the inquiry would hopefully shed light on the myriad ways in which industries like Big Oil exploit the campaign finance system and find ways to make the system more transparent and accountable.

Noah Bookbinder, who is president of the anti-corruption watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that while Trump's offer was technically legal, there is still plenty of work to do in cleaning up the grey areas in federal campaign finance laws.

"There’s a clear legislative purpose in determining what happened at the meeting,” Bookbinder told Sargent. "If this really constituted “an attempt to link significant campaign contributions with specific policy promises, that suggests a huge loophole that needs to be closed.”

READ MORE: 'Corrupt': Jared Kushner's business deals under fire as Trump runs for president

Many of the environmental policies Trump suggested he would do away with in a second term are in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was the $485 billion bill Biden signed into law in 2022 that included a swath of clean energy infrastructure initiatives and incentives for electric vehicle development. Economists projected the clean energy development grants could generate roughly $1.5 trillion in new economic activity, and could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by five billion tons before the next decade.

Conversely, some of the executive orders the oil industry has prepared for Trump would undo the progress on climate Biden has made since taking office. Politico reported that some of the orders would lift Biden's pause on new natural gas export permits, open up new protected federal lands for more oil drilling and allow for more offshore oil drilling leases.

Trump casting Biden as an opponent of Big Oil is somewhat confusing, given that the United States officially hit record-high domestic oil production levels earlier this year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration found that in 2023, the U.S. produced 13 million barrels of oil per day on average, making the United States the world's largest oil producer.

Click here to read Sargent's full essay in the New Republic (subscription required).