{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://amo.house.gov/press-release/amo-lofgren-refer-doe-secretary-chris-wright-to-doj-for-lying-to-congress", "Amo, Lofgren Refer DOE Secretary Chris Wright to DOJ for Lying to Congress", "2026-08-05", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "House", "RI", "Gabe Amo", "A000380", "amo.house.gov", "amo", "https://amo.house.gov/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington, DC \u2013 Yesterday, Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Environment Subcommittee Ranking Member Gabe Amo (D-RI) sent a letter to formally refer Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for lying to the Committee during a hearing on June 10th, 2026. Secretary Wright repeatedly denied that $7.5 billion dollars of DOE awards cancelled by the Trump administration in October 2025 were in retaliation against states that leaned Democratic in the 2024 presidential election (Blue States). Three weeks prior to Secretary Wright\u2019s testimony, DOE attorneys admitted to doing exactly that in court.\n\n\u201cSecretary Wright flatly denied that partisan politics lay behind the termination decisions,\u201d the Members wrote in their letter. \u201cHe testified that \u2018no decisions, no decisions were made on politics\u2019 and that the award terminations \u2018weren\u2019t\u2019 based on how states had voted in the 2024 presidential election. But that was not true. In a federal lawsuit related to the same award terminations, DOE\u2019s Principal Deputy General Counsel formally stipulated that \u2018the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient\u2019s state, i.e., whether the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.\u2019 DOE also stipulated that none of the October 2025 award terminations were \u2018based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor,\u2019 and that 'the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance and DOE\u2019s past or current agency priorities.\u2019\n\n\u201cSecretary Wright lied to the Committee with his statements, which sought to prevent us from learning the truth: that the October award terminations were an act of political retaliation, \u2018based solely\u2019 on whether recipients were located in Blue States. He lied to Congress. In doing so, he violated 18 USC \u00a71001, which bars individuals from making \u2018any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation\u2019 to Congress. We have no choice but to refer Secretary Wright to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution in this matter.\u201d\n\nThe letter can be accessed here, and below.\n\nDear Acting Attorney General Blanche,\n\nOn June 10th, 2026, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (\u201cthe Committee\u201d). During his appearance, a Member of the Committee questioned Secretary Wright about the Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) termination of more than $7.5 billion dollars\u2019 worth of financial awards in October 2025, and whether those terminations were motivated by a partisan desire to retaliate against \u201cBlue States.\u201d In response, Secretary Wright flatly denied that partisan politics lay behind the termination decisions. He testified that \u201cno decisions, no decisions were made on politics\u201d and that the award terminations \u201cweren\u2019t\u201d based on how states had voted in the 2024 presidential election. But that was not true. In a federal lawsuit related to the same award terminations, DOE\u2019s Principal Deputy General Counsel formally stipulated that \u201cthe inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient\u2019s state, i.e., whether the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.\u201d DOE also stipulated that none of the October 2025 award terminations were \u201cbased on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor,\u201d and that \u201cthe differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance and DOE\u2019s past or current agency priorities.\u201d\n\nSecretary Wright lied to the Committee with his statements, which sought to prevent us from learning the truth: that the October award terminations were an act of political retaliation, \u201cbased solely\u201d on whether recipients were located in Blue States. He lied to Congress. In doing so, he violated 18 USC \u00a71001, which bars individuals from making \u201cany materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation\u201d to Congress. We have no choice but to refer Secretary Wright to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution in this matter.\n\nOn October 1st, 2025, DOE announced the termination of hundreds of financial awards. According to the Department\u2019s own analysis, the group of terminated awards was worth approximately $7.56 billion in total. The terminations were immediately criticized as a partisan attack, due to the fact that the \u201cvast majority\u201d of terminated awards were located in states that had voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and currently have two elected Democratic Senators. Secretary Wright publicly denied the accusations of political retaliation. For instance, during an appearance on CNN on October 2nd, 2025, he denied that DOE had acted to punish Blue States in its award terminations and claimed that DOE\u2019s decisions were \u201call based on facts.\u201d This remained DOE\u2019s public position throughout the fall of 2025 and the first half of 2026. Secretary Wright reiterated his denials during multiple congressional hearings after the award terminations, including as recently as April 2026 in appearances before the House Committee on Appropriations , the House Committee on Energy and Commerce , and the Senate Committee on Appropriations.\n\nSecretary Wright testified before the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on June 10th, 2026. During his appearance, several Members of the Committee asked direct questions about the October 2025 award terminations. Under questioning by Representative Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, Secretary Wright issued an explicit and unqualified denial that politics played any role in the award termination decisions, and a similarly unqualified denial that the termination decisions were based on how states had voted in the 2024 presidential election. The exchanges between Representative Amo and Secretary Wright are transcribed below:\n\nSecretary Wright: We did not involve politics in the decisions. What the \u2013\n\nRepresentative Amo: What about the outcomes, Mr. Secretary?\n\nSecretary Wright: The court ruling you read was a choice of announcements of some of the awards, the choice of the announcements, not made by our Department. No decisions, no decisions were made on politics. I keep hearing that charge.\n\nRepresentative Amo: So \u2013\n\nSecretary Wright: It\u2019s bullshit. We\u2019re going to say it a million times \u2013\n\nRepresentative Amo: Mr. Secretary \u2013\n\nSecretary Wright: It\u2019s not true.\n\n\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026..\n\nRepresentative Amo: So my question for you, as my time is rapidly expiring, when will you restore these grants?\n\nSecretary Wright: We work every day for \u2013 we\u2019ve gone overboard for New England, for California, for blue states \u2013\n\nRepresentative Amo: That\u2019s not an answer. I\u2019m reclaiming my clock \u2013\n\nSecretary Wright: Your assertions are incorrect.\n\nRepresentative Amo: Mr. Secretary, I\u2019m reclaiming my time. That\u2019s not an answer. Do you believe the federal grant decisions should be based in any way on how a state\u2019s voters cast their ballots in a presidential election?\n\nSecretary Wright: They shouldn\u2019t, and they weren\u2019t.\n\nSecretary Wright was very clear in his testimony. No decisions were based on politics. The award termination decisions should not have been based in any way on how a state voted in the 2024 presidential election, and they weren\u2019t. In the Secretary\u2019s own words, it was bullshit to suggest otherwise.\n\nSecretary Wright lied.\n\nOn June 4th, 2025, a group of plaintiffs based in California filed a lawsuit against DOE and other federal agencies. As the litigation proceeded under the name Neeta Thakur, et al, v. Trump, the plaintiffs broadened their claims to encompass DOE\u2019s actions in October 2025, alleging that DOE had illegally and unconstitutionally terminated their financial awards in an act of political retaliation against the state of California. DOE eventually agreed to a set of formal stipulations in exchange for the plaintiffs agreeing to forego the discovery process. Those stipulations were signed by DOE\u2019s attorneys on May 15th, 2026 \u2013 more than three weeks before Secretary Wright testified in front of the Committee \u2013 and filed to the court docket on July 15th, 2026. Several relevant DOE stipulations are reproduced below, numbered as they appear in the court filing:\n\n8. DOE accepts that neither the inclusion of the ARCHES grant nor any other grants in the October notice tranche was based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.\n\n9. DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient\u2019s state, i.e., whether the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State. DOE will not contend that it looked beyond the prime grantee(s) to consider the political identity or geographic distribution of downstream beneficiaries of the grant funds.\n\n10. DOE accepts that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient\u2019s location and/or place of performance and DOE\u2019s past or current agency priorities.\n\nOn June 10th, in regards to DOE\u2019s October 2025 financial award terminations, Secretary Wright testified before the Committee that no award termination decisions were based on politics, and no award termination decisions were based on how states had voted in the 2024 presidential election. As noted above, on May 15th, nearly three weeks before Secretary Wright testified before the Committee, DOE signed stipulations that politics was the sole basis for the October 2025 award termination decisions, and that how a state had voted in the 2024 presidential election was the defining factor in the political identity that would determine whether it would experience award terminations or not. Secretary Wright\u2019s testimony to the Committee was unambiguously false and misleading.\n\nFederal law forbids such materially false statements. The federal false statements statute, 18 United States Code \u00a71001, is violated when \u201cwhoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; [or] (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation [. . .] [in] any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.\u201d The aforementioned facts establish that Secretary Wright willfully and knowingly made materially false statements and representations during his testimony before the Committee.\n\nAccording to the Department of Justice, whether a false statement is criminal under 18 U.S.C \u00a71001 \u201cdepends on whether there is an affirmative response to each of the following questions:\n\n1. Was the act or statement material?\n\n2. Was the act within the jurisdiction of a department or agency of the United States?\n\n3. Was the act done knowingly and willfully?\u201d\n\nSatisfying the first element requires that the act or statement be material. Materiality is understood as a matter of importance or consequence. Secretary Wright offered his false statements in response to a direct inquiry by a Member of Congress as to whether grant decisions were based on political considerations and presidential election results. He explicitly and falsely denied that any decisions were based on these factors. The Supreme Court of the United States recently affirmed the high degree of materiality of this type of exchange. The materiality element is affirmatively met.\n\nSatisfying the second element requires that the act or statement lie within \u201cthe jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States.\u201d Secretary Wright\u2019s statement occurred in the course of a Congressional hearing conducted under the authority of House Rule X(3)(k), which is well recognized as applicable to the statute. The jurisdictional element is affirmatively met.\n\nSatisfying the third element requires that the act or statement be done knowingly and willfully. Courts have previously held that \u201cin general, \u2018knowingly\u2019 requires the government to prove that a criminal defendant had knowledge of the facts that constitute the offense [...] willfully [...] usually requires the government to prove that the defendant acted not merely voluntarily, but with a bad purpose, that is, with knowledge that his conduct was, in some general sense, unlawful.\u201d DOE\u2019s July 15th stipulation set forth that the grant decisions in question were based on politics. The stipulation of facts was signed by DOE\u2019s attorneys on May 15th, 2026, more than three weeks before Secretary Wright made his false statements to the Committee. Either Secretary Wright made the false statements despite knowing the facts in the stipulation, or he remained deliberately ignorant of them in order to plead a lack of positive knowledge, which amounts in law to the same thing. Secretary Wright had testified repeatedly about the October 2025 award terminations during multiple prior congressional hearings. He made his denials to the Committee on June 10th with a full understanding of the expectation of truthfulness that accompanied his testimony, while nevertheless voluntarily offering materially false statements related to this matter. The final \u201cknowingly and willfully\u201d element is affirmatively met.\n\nReferring a Cabinet Secretary for potential prosecution is not a step we take lightly. It is a weighty thing to assert that a Cabinet Secretary lied to Congress. We do not treat that assertion as a trivial matter, and we do not use those words carelessly. But the facts of the situation are clear and undeniable. As those facts have met the criminal elements of 18 U.S.C \u00a71001, we refer this matter to the Department of Justice. We request that DOJ review this matter expeditiously and with the utmost seriousness, and if warranted, seek to bring criminal charges against Secretary Wright.\n\n###", 1, "2026-08-15T05:23:20Z", "2026-08-15T05:24:50Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://amo.house.gov/press-release/amo-lofgren-refer-doe-secretary-chris-wright-to-doj-for-lying-to-congress"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9838100522756577, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}