(Headline USA) Actor Leonardo DiCaprio funded a number of environmentalist dark money groups that in turn funneled the loot into a law firm suing oil companies for “climate change deception,” according to emails.
The emails showed that the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the actor’s nonprofit organization, awarded $20 million in grants to various “climate change” groups, including the dark money group Resources Legacy Fund.
Resources Legacy Fund then contributed more than $5.2 million to law firm Sher Edling between 2017 and 2020. Sher Edling was, at the time, in the process of suing oil companies for allegedly releasing inaccurate information about their environmental impact.
In one email, leftist philanthropist Dan Emmett revealed that Chuck Savitt, the law firm’s director of strategic client relationships, had already received support from Terry Tamminen, the then-CEO of the Leonard DiCaprio Foundation.
“Chuck Savitt who is heading this new organization behind the lawsuits has been seeking our support,” Emmett wrote to Ann Carlson, a climate change professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, on July 22, 2017. “Terry Tamminen in his new role with the DiCaprio Foundation has been a key supporter.”
Emmett also forwarded an email from Savitt showing the law firm was beginning to use the funds it received from the Resources Legacy Fund to file lawsuits.
“Wanted to let you know that we filed the first three lawsuits supported by the Collective Action Fund on Monday,” Savitt told Emmett, according to the email.
“These precedent setting cases call on 37 of the world’s leading fossil fuel companies to take responsibility for the devastating damage sea level rise – caused by their greenhouse gas emissions – is having on coastal communities.”
Several months after this exchange, Emmett told Carlson that she could mention DiCaprio’s support for the lawsuits to other prospective donors.
“You can tell him Terry’s organization and I are both serious supporters, that you are an advisor, that the science is there, that it could do more for the environment than just about anything going on if it succeeds,” Emmett said in the email.
