New Biden administration climate envoy John Podesta, who reportedly played a major role in the decision to pause exports of U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), is the brother of powerful lobbyist Tony Podesta, whose clients include foreign energy companies who could reap the benefits from losing a major source of competition, according to a new report.
The pause comes after left-leaning charities funded by deep-pocketed donors such as the Rockefeller brothers and Michael Bloomberg spent millions on groups that lobbied the administration, and sources told The Washington Free Beacon that John Podesta had played a large part in bringing about the new policy.
Podesta replaced former climate envoy John Kerry, who stepped down in January to participate in President Joe Biden's reelection campaign.
Meanwhile, in recent years, Tony Podesta’s client roster has included LNG group Golden Pass, which is co-owned by the state-run QatarEnergy, and the Bulgarian company Protos Energy.
Further, records quoted by the Free Beacon show that his firm has brought in more than $1 million since 2022 from Gemcorp, which has been barred from working with a Bulgarian LNG project because of its links to Russia.
Tony Podesta's clients and potential for overlapping with his brother's work with the Biden administration have been called into question before, when House lawmakers in 2021 questioned if his work with the Chinese company Huawei would influence the administration's policy on China.
"It's no secret that John Podesta is the person behind this moratorium," an unnamed energy insider told the Free Beacon. "Congress should take a very hard look at the fact that his own brother stands to financially benefit from a restriction of U.S. LNG on the global market, whether it be from his past work with the Qataris or current reported work with Russian-backed entities with interest in LNG."
Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, called the pause in LNG exports a "win for Russia and a loss for American allies, U.S. jobs, and global climate progress."
Meanwhile, Gemcorp's Russian roots have made it controversial, after $250 million in seed money from Russian energy tycoon Albert Avdolyan and telecom mogul Sergei Adoniev, was used to found it, The Financial Times reported in 2022. Before working with Gemcorp, Tony Podesta represented Protos Energy from 2021 to 2022.
The company’s owner Georgi Samuilov told the Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data that Podesta was hired because his company had an "interest" in the United States' LNG market.
According to lobbying disclosure records, he also lobbied for Golden Pass, a joint venture of QatarEnergy and ExxonMobil, between 2013 and 2018.
Tony Podesta, the White House, and Gemcorp did not respond to the Free Beacon's requests for comment.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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