Axios reported Friday that House Republicans will launch a probe into environmental NGOs based mostly on a right-wing rumor that international powers, together with China and Russia, are utilizing nonprofit inexperienced teams to affect U.S. coverage. That unsubstantiated rumor has been pushed for years by a PR agency employed by the fossil gas business to run astroturf campaigns that assault members of the environmental motion.

In a weblog put up posted earlier this month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy mentioned that he would use his management in Congress to analyze, amongst different issues, “environmental NGOs’ collusion with Russia and China to hurt American Energy.” The thought of environmental NGOs colluding with international governments has additionally been a selected focus of the House Natural Resources chair Bruce Westerman, who launched a probe into nonprofit the World Resources Institute in 2018.

“Chinese officials continually work to control environmental information and news stories in an effort to counter the country’s status as the world’s largest polluter,” a press launch on the investigation reads. “The Committee is examining WRI’s role in aiding China’s perception management efforts with respect to pollution control and its international standing on environmental issues in ways that may be detrimental to the United States.”

Westerman instructed Axios that different power points have larger precedence on his agenda, but when “there’s evidence the Chinese government is funding their actions, we have to go after them. I don’t care what kind of group they are.”

McCarthy and Westerman’s curiosity on this subject builds on a sequence of letters despatched by GOP politicians to numerous inexperienced teams asking about supposed international affect.

“We write to you with significant concerns that American progressive advocacy groups may be advancing U.S. government economic and environmental policies to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party,” reads a letter despatched to Sunrise Movement govt director Varshini Prakash final 12 months. Another letter, despatched in March to the League of Conservation Voters, alleges that “Russian President Vladimir Putin funds certain environmental non-governmental organizations around the world to create fear among other nations’ use of [fracking] to ensure dependence on Russian gas.”

These allegations and investigations don’t come from skinny air. In March, the Washington Post debunked the claims about Russian connections to inexperienced teams, tying the unique rumor to a gaggle referred to as the Environmental Policy Alliance, which began pushing it in 2015. While the Environmental Policy Alliance could sound just like the identify of a respectable nonprofit, it’s really run by a PR agency often known as The Berman Group, which has a protracted historical past of offering astroturfing providers to firms—together with founding entrance teams that run campaigns to criticize authorities businesses, nonprofits, labor unions, and different entities. (The agency’s methods are so well-known in Washington that, in 2011, 60 Minutes dubbed founder Richard Berman “Dr. Evil.”)

The Berman Group has important ties to the fossil gas business and has run campaigns utilizing its entrance teams attacking anti-fracking teams and making (really wild) movies attacking the EPA and rules meant to lower air pollution. In 2014, Berman instructed fossil gas executives at an business assembly that they need to make use of down-and-dirty ways when preventing towards environmental teams.

“Think of this as an endless war,” Berman mentioned, according to the New York Times, which obtained a recording of the assembly. “And you have to budget for it.” In the identical speech, Berman’s colleague described how the agency had dug into the non-public lives of the management of teams just like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council in an try to seek out dust to publicize.

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’’ Berman said in the 2014 meeting. “We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us.”

Now, evidently all that cash spent on spreading rumors about inexperienced teams is lastly bearing fruit. Great to know that taxpayer {dollars} are serving to to fund an investigation right into a declare made up by a “Dr. Evil.”