The Dark Money Network Propping Up Climate Denial and Tax Cuts for Billionaires (Q&A)

"We can’t control everything, but we can try to influence some things, especially collectively," says Connor Gibson.

During this Trump administration, Charles Koch’s influence is everywhere. The fossil fuel billionaire funds a nationwide network of rightwing organizations, the most famous of which are probably American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the prolific incubator of rightwing legislation, and Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian-conservative advocacy group, which lobbied hard for Trump’s recent mega-bill that gave tax cuts to billionaires. The Koch network spent millions helping launch Project 2025, and its donors and partners are all over the Trump administration. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, for example, is a Koch network donor.

Connor Gibson is an independent opposition research consultant specialized in climate change deniers, fossil fuel lobbying, deceptive public relations, dishonest front groups, dark money, and all-things Koch. He founded Grassrootbeer Investigations after spending a decade at Greenpeace USA. I’ve been lucky enough to work with him, and I wanted to ask him how the Koch network’s influence is playing out now, during this time of unprecedented handouts to the billionaire class.

Meaghan: Why have you devoted time to researching the Koch network?

Connor: Throughout my career, I’ve been paying attention to political spending that prevents policy solutions related to environmental protection and climate change. Koch Industries – the oil petrochemical industrial multinational conglomerate that’s headquartered in Wichita, Kansas – has been and remains a massive opponent to climate and environmental policies and regulations.

Corporations know exactly what to expect from their return on investment in politicians. For that reason, financial disclosures related to political spending are extremely important for identifying basic problems with our democracy.

The same exact logic can be applied to any interest group, whether it’s the pharmaceutical or insurance industry. These companies that sell these products are often not concerned with the impact that their product has on the consumer. They’re concerned with making money. In fact, as we know well enough now, corporations are legally mandated to maximize profits to shareholders, often at the expense of a healthy population. So, I take great interest in using the financial paper trail as key data points, examining the lobbying and donor disclosures, the behavior of politicians that are affiliated with these donors, to help make a case that perhaps there’s a quid pro quo arrangement.

Meaghan: In this Trump era, all the corruption is such a brazen caricature of itself. Can you tell me how Koch spending fits into the oligarchy we’re seeing now?

Connor: Citizens United is 15 years old, and exceptionally rich people spending money is the new normal now. Charles Koch, I think, is still a unique case for a few reasons.

Charles Koch, as a political actor, is focused on many other issues, but his infrastructure – his nonprofit fleet, as I call it – is still unique in that it is totally centered around his privately controlled corporation, and his top executives are the people that are running the nonprofits in this network. We’re talking about a multi-billionaire-dollar network at this point.

What Charles Koch has built is also completely unique in terms of its structure, its sophistication, its scope and scale. Somebody who’s getting a lot of scrutiny, like Leonard Leo, who has been massively influential in terms of the Supreme Court, in terms of the Trump administration’s priorities, does not control nearly as much money as Charles Koch.

The Koch fleet is something like 27 nonprofit organizations that are regulated by the IRS. There are a handful of other organizations, PACs and super PACs, that are regulated by the Federal Election Commission. These are Koch-controlled groups, not just groups that they’re funding. That fleet was worth $8.4 billion in assets as of 2023, that’s the latest data that’s available, and that network spent a gross sum of $1.5 billion as of 2023. Money is also circulated between these Koch groups and there’s a dizzying mess of transactions where one group is granting to the other and maybe even granting right back. But, ultimately, it’s money going out the door for politics and policy fights that Charles Koch wants to see.

Koch is also unique in terms of his influence. The Koch apparatus is built around a for-profit company specifically, and that for-profit company has been very politically active for decades. There aren’t many corporations out there whose executives have been that neck deep in politics for so long.

Meaghan: What’s an example of something that Koch and his allies have gotten with that spending?

Connor: The Koch network was over the moon about getting the tax bill with tax cuts passed by the Republican Congress during Trump’s first term. That was worth many untold billions of dollars for somebody like Charles Koch and every owner or major shareholder of a major corporation.

Super rich people got a great return on their investment for their efforts to support the Republican Congress, as well as getting their people on Donald Trump’s cabinet. The Kochs having such permanent infrastructure really allows them to adapt to those changing political winds and continually be opportunistic.

In general, the recipients of the Koch’s dark money funds, including front groups, can serve as independent validators, which is really important for their donors. The tobacco industry innovated by getting doctors to smoke and wage a public relations campaign against the facts of the harms of cigarettes. The oil companies, coal companies, car companies, did the exact thing when they hired a cohort of bozos, through consulting firms and subcontractors, to go on TV and say, “I am a scientist, and climate change is not a problem.” That’s still happening. So, being able to anonymize the money trail that pays for that is worth it for these companies.

Meaghan: With all these terrible things happening, how are you coping?

Connor: In a time of inflation and housing crisis and just the cost of living being as expensive as it is, a time when people are paying a ton for health insurance that might not even help them, I really feel for people that are just trying to get by right now.

I don’t try to keep up with the 24-hour news cycle anymore. I try to be really educated on things that I’m specialized in, but eventually I shut my computer and I go play the drums and make music with my friends. These are privileges that are afforded to me by having stable employment and a house that I’m living in, things that I really try not to take for granted, because they’re things that a lot of people don’t have.

A lot of us have common cause. There are people who I wouldn’t be friends with, but at the same time, at the end of the day, Elon Musk is as ambivalent about their existence as he is about mine. In the grand scheme of things, there’s the super rich, and then there’s everyone else.

I think it’s very important to recognize what we can’t control. But control and influence are different, and we might be able to influence some things that we don’t have control over. It’s difficult when we’re being bombarded with cynicism and disinformation, and so, the danger right now is people feeling rightfully so disconnected from political leadership, so underserved, so ignored as to start to believe that they can’t influence any of these issues. People might be at danger of mistaking what they can influence through collective action for what’s out of our control.

So, we can’t control everything, but we can try to influence some things, especially collectively, and I don’t think there’s any other choice. If things get worse, we don’t want to look back and think, “Maybe I should have done something else instead of watching another episode of some TV show.”