Money From Bernie Madoff’s Most Successful Client Now Fuels Climate Lawfare

A foundation established by the family who made more money from Bernie Madoff’s fraud than anyone else – including Madoff himself – is funding climate lawsuits aimed at implementing the disastrous Green New Deal.

Barbara and Jeffry Picower, a lawyer and accountant who managed tax shelters, were the single largest beneficiaries of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. They made more than $7.2 billion by withdrawing other investors’ money from Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, according to court documents from the Madoff case.

It has long been believed that the Picowers were aware of Madoff’s scheme. Picower, an experienced investor, likely would have found it strange for one of his accounts to see 950% returns in a single year. Two other accounts reported annualized returns of 100% between 1996 and 1999.

“Picower benefited tremendously from Madoff’s fraud and is not a victim,” Irving Picard, trustee for the liquidation of Madoff’s investment securities fraud, wrote in legal documents.

Jeffry Picower died at his Florida home in 2009, just 10 months after Madoff was arrested. Barbara Picower’s lawyers fought unsuccessfully for their client to only return a fraction of the $7.2 billion that prosecutors said she owed. They were ultimately unsuccessful: after the feds signaled they were looking into whether the Picowers were involved in the “conspiracy” to defraud investors, she agreed to hand over the full $7.2 billion, according to Forbes.

But she was allowed to collect the $200 million inheritance from her husband, who at one point quietly held over $10 billion in his investment accounts. That was more than enough for her to continue her life as a philanthropist, winning back the public favor that her family lost during the Madoff scandal.

She used her husband’s estate to establish the JPB Foundation, which is now spending millions of dollars funding climate lawsuits that seek billions in damages with the goal of bankrupting the fossil fuel industry or forcing energy producers to adopt emissions caps and other environmentalist ideals.

A San Francisco-based law firm called Sher Edling LLP represents multiple cities, states, and counties suing the fossil fuel energy, alleging they are responsible for climate change and natural disasters. But the legal expenses accrued by these lawsuits aren’t paid by the municipalities — they’re covered by a network of left-wing dark money organizations, including the Collective Action Fund, which has given more than $8 million to Sher Edling between 2017 and 2021, according to Energy In Depth, a research organization that debunks climate activist narratives.

The Picower’s JPB Foundation has donated at least $4.45 million to the Collective Action Fund, according to the Capital Research Center.

The foundation has also given at least $1 million to the Climate Judiciary Project, another radical climate organization, Real Clear Politics reported.

The Climate Judiciary Project works with judges across the country to offer them an “educational curriculum,” encouraging them to favor plaintiffs suing fossil fuel producers for millions of dollars. While doing this, the CJP claims to be an objective judicial education organization.

O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, a group that opposes these sorts of lawsuits due to the negative impact they have on the average American consumer, told The Daily Wire that the Picower foundation’s involvement shouldn’t be a surprise.

“It’s entirely unsurprising that a key source for these ideological climate change lawsuits is a family of financial kingpins who have wheeled and dealed in the more notorious corners of the financial markets, making money hand over fist by being one step ahead of regulators and lawsuits,” Skinner said.

Skinner suggested the JPB Foundation’s involvement in climate lawsuits was part of an effort to repair the Picower family image.

“In the real world, taking away things from everyday people isn’t how you make the world better,” Skinner added. “But apparently when you have billions from financial alchemy and narrow scrapes with court appointed trustees, the pat on the back at the cocktail party must feel like it makes it worth it.”

The spending worked. This year, the liberal Ford Foundation celebrated Barbara Picower’s “enduring legacy,” crediting her for being “fearless in her mission” to, among other things, “address critical environmental issues.” It also credits her for her goal to “empower those living in poverty,” making no mention of the billions of dollars she earned through one of the most infamous fraud schemes in history.

The lawsuits backed by the JPB foundation have been referred to as “the Green New Deal by lawsuit,” referring to the ill-fated and much-mocked proposal by climate activists in congress that would harm the economy without any meaningful impact on the climate, The Daily Wire previously reported.

A study from the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, found that the Green New Deal’s “net zero” emissions proposal would require around $490 billion a year in investments to so-called green energy and would lead to a sharp decrease in land for agricultural needs. The Green New Deal also fails to consider that the vast majority of industrial pollution comes from China and India, meaning changes in the United States would decimate its economy without making any significant dent in the total amount of global pollution.

Neither the JPB Foundation nor Sher Edling responded to requests for comment.