Youngkin Appoints “Citizens United” Chief Operating Officer, Former Koch Brothers and Trump Administration Official Closely Connected with the Fossil Fuel Industry to the State Air Pollution Control Board!

One of the many reasons why electing Glenn Youngkin governor in November 2021 was an ongoing disaster is that Youngkin gets to appoint people to a wide variety of boards and commissions in Virginia, dealing with important topics – education, elections, environment, you name it. Unfortunately, as should have been glaringly obvious during the 2021 election, putting a right winger like Youngkin into the governor’s mansion would mean that Virginia boards and commissions would go downhill fast in terms of quality. Today, we get another example of this; check out who Gov. Glenn Youngkin just appointed (Daniel Jorjani) to the State Air Pollution Control Board!

• Per ProPublica: “Daniel Jorjani previously worked for groups connected to the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, owners of a conglomerate that sells coal, gasoline and other products. The groups include the Charles Koch Institute, the Charles Koch Foundation and Freedom Partners, an organization of conservative political donors led by the Koch brothers.”
• Per the League of Conservation Voters: “Before joining DOI, Jorjani held several positions with groups funded by the well-known oil magnates, the Koch brothers. Prior to his confirmation, Jorjani served as Interior’s Principal Deputy Solicitor and was responsible for providing legal guidance for some of the Interior Department’s most egregious decisions in support of Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda. Time and again his legal opinions benefitted oil, gas, mining or extractive interests at the expense of conservation and public health. Jorjani has also demonstrated an aversion to transparency, including restricting Freedom of Information Act responses and justifying Interior Secretary Bernhardt’s troubling practice of not maintaining a calendar, which made it harder for the public to know with whom he has been meeting.  Jorjani’s ties to the fossil fuel industry and efforts to hinder transparency within the Department put him at odds with the core mission of the office of the solicitor. “
• According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “Jorjani got this job despite a disturbing history of twisting our laws into pretzels to give the oil industry permission to kill wildlife and destroy our public land.”
• Also per the Center for Biological Diversity: “Jorjani has personally authored numerous legal opinions defending some of the Interior Department’s most egregious decisions. Those include Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda to sell out public lands, the rollback of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the elimination of protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.”
• Jorjani currently is “Chief Operating Officer and Principal Deputy General Counsel, Citizens United.” And yes, we’re talking about THAT “Citizens United,” the ones who are in the infamous Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision which allowed “corporations and outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on electoral campaigns.” This was, of course, disastrous on many levels, including for the environment As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse put it, “Our failure in Congress to address climate change is directly connected to the secret empire of dark money that Citizens United launched,” with it being “fair to say that the fossil fuel industry got its money’s worth.” Ugh.

In short, this guy is the polar OPPOSITE of someone you’d want on Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board! So of course a fossil fuel tool and climate science “skeptic” (or outright denier?) Glenn Youngkin put him there. Horrible.