Jacob Fischler, Ohio Capital Journal

The firms’ conduct went beyond the bounds of ethical public relations work, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee and industry experts said. Oil and gas groups have spent exorbitant sums to promote their agenda and drown out opposing views, resulting in energy policy that has deterred action on climate, they said.

“The fossil fuel industry is strategically misleading members of all of our constituencies to line their own pockets, stymie climate action and disrupt the democratic process,” New York Democrat Paul Tonko said. ...

The hearing will be the eighth in the panel’s series to document its findings but is the first evening meeting since its initial presentation last month. It will begin at 8 p.m. ET and can be watched on a livestream here.

The committee leaders once indicated the series would comprise eight major public hearings, but aides now say more are likely, as the panel has heard from additional witnesses since the start of public meetings. ...

Groups of fake electors met on Dec. 14, 2020, in those seven states, an investigative counsel working for the panel, Casey Lucier, said in a video presentation shown in a Tuesday hearing of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The hearing revealed some intriguing details of the fake elector plot, which the U.S. House panel says Trump and his lawyers knew was illegal, and how it played out in four states in particular:

ARIZONA

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a self-described conservative Republican who campaigned for Trump in 2020, testified in person Tuesday about the pressure the Trump campaign put on him to revoke the state’s legitimate electors — and his steadfast refusal to participate....