“In one of [his] executive orders, President Trump described the coal industry as beautiful,” said Robert L. Levy, ExxonMobil’s executive counsel, at a 2025 event organized by the Federalist Society. 

“No such reference to the beauty of the oil and gas side of the industry,” he went on, “but we are very appreciative of the support that the administration has given.”

Now Levy is poised to help lead the Trump administration’s efforts to protect companies like Exxon from climate lawsuits

In a late June social media post, Levy announced that he was leaving his job at Exxon to take an environmental litigation role at the Justice Department, in a division that calls itself the nation’s environmental lawyer and the largest environmental law firm in the country.

“After 17 wonderful years at Exxon Mobil Corporation, I will be retiring this summer,” Levy posted on LinkedIn, “[to] begin a new chapter of public service as Senior Counsel in the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division” — which the DOJ renamed the “Energy and Natural Resources Division” shortly after his announcement.

“I’m excited to contribute to the [Trump] administration’s energy priorities and to our nation’s environmental and legal landscape,” he wrote in the since-deleted post. 

Historically, ENRD has been tasked with enforcing environmental laws. In Trump’s second term, the division is mirroring the president’s love affair with fossil fuels by allying with major polluters instead.

In May, ENRD filed a complaint about Minnesota’s lawsuit against Exxon, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and Flint Hills Resources, which charges them with consumer fraud for knowingly misleading the public about the harmful impacts of burning fossil fuels on the climate.

According to the Justice Department division, the state is “undermin[ing] American energy dominance — which is a cornerstone of national environmental policy,” by attempting to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which only the federal government has the authority to do.

Levy should fit right in at ENRD, which is also trying to block laws in other states that hold fossil fuel companies accountable for promoting global warming disinformation, including Hawaii, Michigan, New York, and Vermont.

“There are a series of lawsuits that are challenging the industry, claiming that the sale of oil and gas somehow is a deceptive act, violating consumer protection statutes,” Levy said in 2025, at an “energy emergency” event organized by the Federalist Society. “Of course, in my view, there is not any developed law that would support these claims, and there shouldn’t be developed law that would support those claims.”

Levy’s move from Exxon to the Trump administration, which was first reported on July 6 by E&E News, “epitomizes the deep corruption that pervades Washington and undermines good policy-making and enforcement,” Robert Weissman, co-president of the think tank Public Citizen, told DeSmog in email.

“More specifically, this appointment comes in conjunction with a rename of ENRD and an overt 180 degree reorientation of the division, away from enforcing environmental laws and towards advancing the interests of Big Oil and gas.”

As a senior legal counsel, Levy is likely to play a major role in the Trump administration’s unprecedented attacks against state climate policies and lawsuits, alongside ENRD colleagues such as Marc Marie, who is connected to the Koch-funded lobby group Americans for Prosperity and worked at ENRD during the first Trump administration.

ENRD’s leader, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson, was previously at Boyden Gray, a law firm well-known for representing fossil fuel interests, and is heading the division’s lawsuit against Vermont’s climate accountability law.

Levy and Gustafson appeared together at a May 2025 panel discussing the state of climate litigation and laws, including the Trump administration’s moves to rescind the “endangerment finding” — the legal foundation of federal authority to regulate carbon emissions.

In addition to directing legal strategy for Exxon, Levy has helped lead conservative legal organizations that have crusaded for decades to reshape state and federal laws as well as civil litigation in business-friendly, with financial support from fossil fuel companies such as Koch Industries, other major corporate interests, and right-wing donors such as Leonard Leo.

Fossil Fuel Insider

Levy currently chairs the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA), one of the country’s most influential organizations lobbying to weaken consumers’ ability to sue businesses for climate, pharmaceutical, chemical, and other harms.

ATRA included Exxon on its membership lists in 2002, 2004, and 2014, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and provided to DeSmog by Fieldnotes.

In its 2023 year federal lobbying report, the most recent available, Exxon disclosed payments to ATRA ranging from $10,000 to $24,999.

Levy was the ATRA board’s chair from 2020 to 2021 as well, followed by stints as its treasurer in 2022, and vice-chair in 2023.

When Levy announced his move to the Trump administration on LinkedIn, Koch Companies Public Sector associate general counsel Melissa Brown — whose time on the ATRA board has overlapped with Levy’s — responded, “You will be missed in our circles — it has been a pleasure to work with you!!” Brown was on the board since at least 2018, according to the organization’s IRS Form 990 filings.

Levy has also been a board officer and treasurer of Lawyers for Civil Justice (LCJ), an organization that advocates for changes to procedural rules and civil discovery that would limit  litigation against corporations.

He also recently disclosed involvement with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform (IRL), a prominent advocate for restricting civil liability.

Exxon was a member for years of the corporate board of another conservative non-profit American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), until leaving the organization in 2018. Some of those years have overlapped with Levy’s time at Exxon, although it’s not clear whether Levy personally held any ALEC role on his employer’s behalf.

ALEC, which has a long history of promoting climate denial, works to advance conservative policies in part by developing model legislation aimed at state lawmakers.  One of its longest-serving corporate board members is Koch Industries lobbyist Mike Morgan. 

ALEC’s efforts at limiting climate liability include a draft bill that has influenced legislation introduced in several states, and aligns with the efforts of the US Chamberof Commerce’s(USCOC) Institute for Legal Reform and the Leo-tied Alliance for Consumers, which have supported similar legislation in states including Indiana, Kansas, and Utah.

The DOJ’s effort to block Minnesota’s climate lawsuit is significant because in April, it became one of the few climate litigation cases to move into the discovery phase — making it one of the country’s most closely-watched state actions to hold fossil fuel interest accountable for decades of promoting climate disinformation.

In the department’s announcement, Gustafson described ENRD’s case against Minnesota as “an attempt to rein in another unconstitutional state effort to invade an area of exclusive federal control,” that could “undermine our economic and national security to advance the climate agenda of politicians and activists.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison shot back that “this frivolous and meritless lawsuit is just their latest attempt to hide from accountability, and I will move to have it dismissed immediately,” according to Fox 9 KMSP News. “The American people deserve a Department of Justice that fights for us, and it’s a tremendous shame that Trump’s DOJ would rather sell us out to Big Oil.”

Public Citizen’s Weissman described the Trump administration’s transformation of ENRD as “asking Big Oil and Dirty Energy executives, lawyers, and lobbyists to make energy policy and unmake environmental protections.

“Donald Trump doesn’t say many truthful things, but he didn’t lie when he told Big Oil executives that he’d deliver on their wish list.”