Institute Training US Judges On Climate May Be CCP-Linked, Group Tells Congress

A national security group launched a six-figure advertising campaign Tuesday pressing Congress to investigate a nonprofit that trains American judges on climate science in part over alleged China ties.

State Armor renewed its request to five Republican committee chairmen Tuesday morning — two in the Senate and three in the House — in a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter, which follows a previous State Armor letter sent in June, adds a claim that the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) is working against the American data center buildout.

The ELI “has positioned itself as a leading voice against the rapid development of data centers and the energy infrastructure necessary to power them,” State Armor Chief Executive Officer Michael Lucci wrote in the Tuesday letter.

The institute has a long history of engagement with Chinese institutions and “is working to impede American development in a strategically critical industry while China races ahead,” Lucci added.

The Environmental Law Institute did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The letter supports that claim with two links to the institute’s own website. One points to a July 2025 public webinar on data center water use that the institute co-hosted with the Network for the Digital Economy and Environment, with panelists from Virginia Tech, the consulting firm WestWater Research and the nonprofit Protect Our Aquifer. The other points to a comment published this month in the Environmental Law Reporter, the institute’s journal, titled “A Call for a National Data Center Moratorium and Policy Framework.”

Bob Sussman, who served as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, wrote that comment. The journal says on its articles page that it welcomes outside submissions and that its goal is to educate the profession and foster debate.

“ELI has allowed itself to be a middleman for Chinese influence here in America, and has carried out work that effectively advances the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] geopolitical goals,” Lucci said in a statement provided to the DCNF. “Congress needs to take a serious look at ELI’s actions and relationships with Communist China to determine if legal action should be taken.”

Suggestions that the Climate Judiciary Project’s activities are improper are “without merit,” the institute states on its website. The project provides education and does not advise judges on how to rule in any case, the institute says on the same page. Its curriculum draws on the National Climate Assessment, the National Academies and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and each module undergoes peer review before release, according to the institute.

The campaign includes a television advertisement airing in Washington, mobile billboards on Capitol Hill and outside the institute’s M Street headquarters and targeted digital advertising, State Armor said in materials provided to the DCNF. The group described the effort as a six-figure buy.

Lucci addressed the letter to Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie of the House Judiciary Committee and Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

The letter asks Congress to examine the institute’s funding, its relationships with Chinese entities, its information-sharing activities and its judicial education programs. The institute “may represent one of the most sophisticated and least scrutinized potential avenues of Chinese influence operating within American legal and policy institutions,” Lucci wrote.

State Armor released the underlying report in July. The 39-page document alleges the institute worked with Chinese government agencies, universities, judges and legal groups for decades while advancing policies in the United States that restrict domestic energy production. The report says the Climate Judiciary Project has trained more than 2,000 American judges.

The institute has provided training and resources on environmental law to more than 3,000 judges in 28 countries since 1990. It created the Climate Judiciary Project in 2018.

Judges trained by or working with Communist China “have no place in our judicial system,” Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton wrote in a Facebook post in July. American judges “should closely vet the programs they participate in and never take part in training sponsored by CCP-linked United Front groups,” Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said in remarks reported by The Daily Signal.

“That a firm can sit on ELI’s board and brief CCP-adjacent groups while defending energy companies in dozens of climate suits is exactly the kind of conflict that should outrage clients and federal officials alike,” said Chad Mizelle, a former chief of staff and acting associate attorney general at the Justice Department, in a statement provided by State Armor.

The Supreme Court will hear Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County on Oct. 5 in the first argument of its new term. The case will decide whether local governments can pursue energy companies for climate damages under state law.

“We are training judges around the world on critical topics in domestic and international environmental law and informing communities dependent on the Gulf of Mexico on how to influence the restoration and recovery process,” the ELI states on its website. “We educate thousands of environmental professionals each year in the United States, with the conviction that more skilled environmental professionals result in better environmental outcomes.”

The institute adds that the “ultimate goal is to help people improve the implementation of environmental and natural resource law globally.”

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