‘Climate Lawfare:’ Kansas AG Asks Justice Department To Investigate Chinese Climate Firm

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sent a letter Monday to Attorney General Pam Bondi calling for an investigation into a Chinese firm suspected of engaging in “climate lawfare.”

Kobach wrote to Bondi that Energy Foundation China’s “environmental lawfare poses a growing challenge for American industry and the American consumer because it drives up energy costs. … It also weakens our national security and places us at a strategic disadvantage with our adversaries in China.”

The Kansas attorney general recently testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the same topic, alleging that Energy Foundation China — a San Francisco-based climate activist group with ties to the Chinese Communist Party — funnels money to American climate groups to drown American firms in climate-related lawsuits.

“It is evident that China’s asymmetric warfare against the United States extends to our nation’s courtrooms and state legislatures,” Kobach said in his statement before the committee. “The CCP plainly has a strategy of driving the United States away from domestic energy sources and increasing U.S. dependence on sources that rely on a Chinese supply of solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, and other technologies.”

The committee hearing, “Enter The Dragon– China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance,” focused on the ways the CCP may be interfering with the American energy sector, which was detailed in a report by State Armor, a research group aimed at exposing CCP activity in the United States.

While the CCP develops green technologies like solar panels and windmills, it advocates for climate legislation in America through Energy Foundation China, hoping to make America dependent on imported Chinese-produced technology, according to the report.

Subcommittee Chairman Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) also noted in the hearing that another group is reportedly training judges to sway in favor of those pursuing restrictive climate policies.

Cruz noted that the Climate Judiciary Project, which claims to be impartial and uninvolved in litigation, reportedly trains and supports judges who preside over cases of climate litigation in ways that heavily influence their decisions in favor of the climate agenda.

Kobach wrote in his letter that, “The Senate hearing exposed that China’s ongoing asymmetric campaign against the United States extends to our nation’s courtrooms and state legislatures, and that the EFC plays a central role in that campaign.”

“This three-pronged strategy — foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination — is a full-spectrum assault on American energy independence,” Cruz said. “And while China drills and digs, we sue and shut down.”

“Every day, Communist China is waging a war on American energy to make us more reliant on technology that is built and controlled by the CCP,” the State Armor founder and CEO said in a statement to The Daily Wire. “As part of their strategy to control our energy grid and supply chains, they control non-profits and co-opt left-wing environmental groups to drive the CCP’s agenda through our own court systems and universities.”

Kobach concluded his letter to Bondi by calling for an investigation into Energy Foundation China’s deep-rooted connection to the CCP and its involvement in changing American climate legislation.

“I respectfully urge the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the actions of the EFC in America, including its ties to climate lawfare in the courts,” Kobach wrote. “It is important to learn the full extent of the CCP’s reach into the ongoing campaign of environmental lawfare in our state and federal courts.”

Lucci supported Kobach’s call for an investigation, adding that, “No sane country would allow its strategic adversary to severely damage its national security, control its energy supply chains, and insert kill switches into its energy grid, all driven through united front influence operations.”

“The evidence is clear,” he wrote. “EFC should be permanently shut down.”