Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for ExxonMobil, thought he was being head-hunted for a potential major lobbying client. He ended up being an unwitting participant in a Greenpeace U.K. sting to expose how his company was targeting a core group of influential senators—many of whom are in that bipartisan gang—to weaken efforts to combat climate change in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan.

McCoy, who’s been lobbying for ExxonMobil for eight years, named 11 senators who have been “crucial” to ExxonMobil: Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Jon Tester, Maggie Hassan, Chris Coons, and Mark Kelly; and Republican Sens. John Barrasso, John Cornyn, Steve Daines, Marco Rubio, and Shelley Moore Capito. Note those Democrats, particularly. Here are the 10 Democrats who signed on to the bipartisan effort: Coons, Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Kelly, Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Sinema, Tester, and Mark Warner along with Independent Angus King.

How handy for ExxonMobil, huh? That their “crucial” Democrats are all in this gang intent on watering down Biden’s infrastructure bill. “Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week,” McCoy boasted. “He is the kingmaker on this because he’s a Democrat from West Virginia which is [a] very conservative state, so he is, and he’s not shy about sort of staking his claim early and completely changing the debate,” McCoy said. “On the Democrat side we look for the moderates on these issues,” he continued, pointing to Sinema, Tester, and particularly Coons.

“Senator Coons […] has a very close relationship with [President] Biden, so we’ve been working with his office—as a matter of fact our CEO is talking to him next Tuesday and having those conversations and just teeing it up, and then that way I can start working with his staff to let them know where we are on some of these issues,” McCoy said. He also targets the senators up for reelection next, posting out Kelly, Hassan, and Rubio. “I can’t worry about the 2027 class because they’re not focused on re-election. The 2022 [class] is focused on re-election so I know I have them […] You can have those conversations with them because they’re a captive audience, they know they need you and I need them,” McCoy said.

The climate change fight isn’t the only reason ExxonMobil is so intent on torpedoing Biden’s plan, McCoy said. They’re also fighting the tax increases Biden wants to pay for it. “We’re playing defense because President Biden is talking about this big infrastructure package and he’s going to pay for it by increasing corporate taxes,” McCoy said on the video call. If the plan could be shrunk down to just “roads and bridges,” from $2 trillion to $800 billion, then the tax increases could be minimized or eliminated. “The international tax piece is for, for ExxonMobil is close to a billion dollars.”

Here’s who those Democrats are doing this big favor for: a company that knowingly misled the public on climate change. For decades. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” McCoy said. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true.” Did they fund those groups? Sure. “But there’s nothing illegal about that,” he said. “We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”

As for Biden’s efforts to slow the destruction of the planet by cutting greenhouse gas emissions? That’s “insane,” McCoy said on the call. It’s not going to work anyway, he said, because people don’t really care. “Outside like, of something like Covid where there’s this existential crisis and people rally to support each other. On something like climate change there’s the forest fires, there’s an increase [of] .001 Celsius, that doesn’t affect people’s everyday lives,” he said. This call, it should be noted, happened in May. Before the northwest quadrant of North America was put under a broiler.

This is who the Democrats in that bipartisan “gang” are working for. Not you. Not your children and grandchildren. ExxonMobil. That’s who.  

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