Lawmakers formally refer Big Oil investigation to DOJ: “The deception and the deceit must end”

After accumulating mountains of evidence of the oil industry’s climate deception and lies, members of Congress today formally referred their findings to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and called for a federal investigation into Big Oil.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Jamie Raskin — who jointly released a report last month with new evidence of Big Oil companies’ climate deception — held a press conference Wednesday announcing the referral. “Today, Ranking Member Raskin and I… are sending this referral letter to DOJ to bring to the attention for the Attorney General the findings we have made public, which show a continuing pattern of the fossil fuel industry knowingly and deliberately misleading the public through an ongoing enterprise made up of multiple companies and organizations,” Whitehouse said. “The fraud has now morphed from its hoax and fake science days but the goal is the same: deceive the public to stop real limits on fossil fuel production and increase profits.”

CCI President Richard Wiles described the announcement as “the most substantive and consequential call yet for the Justice Department to take action against Big Oil companies for their ongoing and catastrophic campaign of lies. Last year, nearly two dozen House and Senate members wrote letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland last summer urging the DOJ to investigate or sue ExxonMobile Shell, and other major oil companies. 

During a May 1 hearing chaired by Whitehouse, Sharon Eubanks — the former director of the Tobacco Litigation Team at the Department of Justice — told Senate committee members that the tobacco and oil industries have “many similarities in their liabilities.” 

“Both industries lied to the public and regulators about what they knew about the harms of their product and they lied about when they knew it,” Eubanks said. “There exists solid evidentiary basis to support more information being gathered on these companies, just as the Department of Justice investigated the tobacco industry and ultimately filed a civil racketeering case.”

Whitehouse and Raskin cited Eubank’s testimony in their formal referral to the DOJ.

“The expert testimony gathered at the hearing is a strong indication that a federal, executive branch-led investigation into the fossil fuel industry is warranted as a matter of basic due diligence,” the referral letter reads. In a press conference announcing the referral to DOJ, Whitehouse said the “most obvious” case the DOJ could build against the fossil fuel industry is a civil racketeering case — the same type of case Eubanks successfully led against the tobacco industry.

The referral to the DOJ echoes the calls for climate accountability that dozens of communities across the country have been demanding from oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and others in the form of lawsuits.

"If there's no accountability, and there's no truth, then there's no progress,” Raskin said. “The deception and the deceit must end for us to seriously confront the magnitude of the climate crisis we are in."