Washington, D.C. — Today, the Congressional Integrity Project released a new investigation documenting how Capital Research Center has accepted more than $5.1 million from foundations built on oil and gas fortunes, as it disputes the scientific consensus on climate change and works to defeat climate policy.
According to public tax filings compiled in the report, oil-linked foundations have funneled money directly into Capital Research Center’s operations, including:
- $2.4 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, set up by the heir to an oil and banking dynasty that holds $30 million worth of shares in 22 energy companies, including $9 million in Exxon and $5.7 million in Chevron.
- $1.7 million from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Bradley Impact Fund, one of the largest donors to anti-climate policy causes, spending millions of dollars annually on groups that sow doubt about climate change and work to weaken climate regulations.
- $445,000 from foundations built on the fortune of Oklahoma oil-drilling magnate Lloyd Noble.
- $425,000 from the Searle Freedom Trust, which public tax filings show spent more than $300,000 in 2018 alone on groups that publish and promote climate misinformation, including the Daily Caller News Foundation and the Prager University Foundation.
The report also documents Capital Research Center’s own record, including a 2023 series branding climate science “The Greatest Heist in World History,” a “Green Watch” project that has published more than 500 articles attacking environmental groups, and a 2026 report profiling 15 environmental organizations as “anti-energy NGOs.”
That research has not stayed confined to Capital Research Center’s website. The House Judiciary Committee has cited Capital Research Center’s work in its investigation targeting the Environmental Law Institute, and the Trump Justice Department separately urged prosecutors to investigate George Soros based on a Capital Research Center report that its own president later admitted did not show evidence Soros’s network funded anything illegal.
Congressional Integrity Project Spokesperson Jeremy Funk released the following statement:
“Capital Research Center wants Americans to believe it’s an independent watchdog. The receipts tell a different story. Millions of dollars in oil money flow in, and climate denial and attacks on the environmental movement flow out. Now that same research is being handed to a Republican Congress and Donald Trump’s Justice Department to justify investigations of the groups fighting for clean air and clean water. Reporters and lawmakers deserve to know exactly whose interests Capital Research Center is really serving, and it isn’t the American public’s.”
###