Democratic lawmakers are asking the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, alleging that the nation’s top energy official made false statements to Congress about the termination of $7.6 billion in grants for clean energy projects in blue states, The Times has learned.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San José) and Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) say Wright testified falsely during a June 10 hearing before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology when he stated that the Energy Department did not target states for funding cuts based on their politics. All 16 states that lost money, including California, did not vote for President Trump in the 2024 election.
Then in court documents recently unveiled as part of a California-based lawsuit, attorneys with the Energy Department accepted that the grant cuts announced in October were “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
“Secretary 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, ‘based solely’ on whether recipients were located in Blue States,” wrote Lofgren, ranking minority member on the House Science Committee, and Amo, ranking minority member on the Subcommittee on Environment, in a joint letter to acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche dated Tuesday, obtained by The Times. “He lied to Congress.”
In doing so, they say, Wright violated federal law, which bars individuals from making materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or representations to Congress. They are requesting the Justice Department review the matter “expeditiously and with the utmost seriousness,” and bring criminal charges against Wright if warranted.
“Referring a Cabinet Secretary for potential prosecution is not a step we take lightly,” the lawmakers wrote. “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.”
The Energy Department denied the allegations.
“The Secretary’s statements in his testimony are correct,” agency officials said in a statement. “None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.”
The matter stems from Wright’s comments during the June hearing, when committee members asked about the termination of nearly 300 grants in October. The grants were for clean energy projects such as new battery plants, electrical grid upgrades, carbon capture initiatives and a $1.2-billion award for California’s nascent hydrogen hub known as ARCHES.
“No decisions were made on politics,” Wright said during the hearing. “I keep hearing that charge. It’s bulls—. We’re going to say it a million times. It’s not true.”
Later, Amo asked, “Do you believe the federal grant decisions should be based in any way on how a state’s voters cast their ballots in a presidential election?”
To which Wright replied: “They shouldn’t, and they weren’t.”
Energy Department officials maintain that Wright’s statements were factual. The 284 projects selected for termination were from a larger pool of more than 2,300 projects that the department selected for review earlier in the year, which were located in both red and blue states and not based on political considerations, they said. The Office of Management and Budget then identified the projects announced for termination in October, they said. All but one of these projects were in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris.
Lofgren and Amo noted in their letter that the Energy secretary spoke to the Science Committee more than three weeks after department attorneys stipulated to the opposite in court documents signed May 15, 2026. The documents were filed with the court July 15.
In addition to acknowledging that the grant terminations were based on the politics of the grant recipient’s state, the Energy Department also affirmed in the court documents that “neither the inclusions 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.”
The lawsuit was brought by a group of faculty members and researchers at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, who were among those to lose research grants.
The Energy Department agreed to formal stipulations in exchange for the plaintiffs forgoing the discovery process, which likely would have meant officials would be deposed. Energy Department officials told The Times the admissions were solely to expedite the litigation.
News of the funding cuts first broke in an October post on X from Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Vought wrote. “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”
Wright denied political motivations in the weeks and months that followed, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in October that the decisions were “all based on facts.”
He reiterated similar sentiments in congressional hearings before the House Committee on Appropriations, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the Senate Committee on Appropriations.
Lofgren conceded it’s unlikely that Blanche, a Trump appointee, will take up the case.
“But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t proceed,” she said.
Officials with the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
