During his first bid for public office, a statewide run for Indiana state treasurer in 2010, Pete Buttigieg argued that accepting contributions from banks, political action committees linked to banks, or bank executives would amount to a “conflict of interest,” and he swore off or, in the latter case, limited such donations to far below the legal limit. In his bid for president, Buttigieg has gone further in some respects, swearing off all corporate PAC money and pledging to refuse money from executives at fossil fuel companies. But a review of his campaign disclosure records finds that Buttigieg’s presidential campaign is awash in cash from bank executives — many of them heavily involved in financing the fossil fuel industry. Buttigieg counted among his donors “Ken of Arabia,” the oil financier Ken Moelis, whose firm won the lucrative opportunity to take Saudi Arabia’s government-run oil company public, the largest public offering in history, as well as Dick Fuld, the disgraced former CEO of Lehman Brothers. (After publication, Federal Election Commission records were updated to reflect that the June donation from Moelis was refunded in July, though there are no records for refunds of other Moelis & Co. executive contributions.)

In his 2010 campaign, Buttigieg zeroed in on the problem of banks currying favor with state treasurers, and then reaping lucrative money management contracts later, a practice that is banned in some states, but wasn’t in Indiana. “Very early on in this campaign, I made a decision that I wasn’t going to accept any money from a bank that could be doing business with the state treasurer’s office. I think it creates a conflict of interest. It creates an appearance at the very least that can smell like pay-to-play. It’s not good for the state,” Buttigieg said then. Though his argument is specific to a treasurer’s race, it’s an echo of the same argument now being made by fellow Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has challenged him to release details about his fundraising and open his high-dollar events to the press. “It is even more important that candidates expose possible conflicts of interest right now,” she said recently. “And that means, for example, that the mayor should be releasing who’s on his finance committee, who are the bundlers who are raising big money for him, who he’s given titles to and made promises to.” Under pressure, Buttigieg has promised to release some of that information, but has rejected Warren’s demand that he pledge not to offer ambassadorships to donors.

The parallels between the argument made by Buttigieg in 2010 and Warren in 2019 is clear: A state treasurer has the ability to enter into contracts with banks, making the relationship between the candidate and financial institutions important. A president, though, has broad powers over industries more generally, which is why Buttigieg, Warren, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, and other 2020 candidates refuse corporate PAC donations. Under pressure from climate activists with the Sunrise Movement, most major candidates, including Buttigieg, have also sworn off money from fossil fuel executives as a way of demonstrating their commitment to challenging the industry. But Buttigieg’s receipt of tens of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industries via financiers and industry executives skirts the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, while also running up against Buttigieg’s own campaign pledge from 2010. (That year, Buttigieg wasn’t willing to turn down bank executive money entirely, just limit it: “Somebody who works at a bank, we’re going to hold ourselves to a limit that’s lower than the official limit for what they want to give to my campaign.”) The 2019 contributions, many of which were first reported by Eyes on the Ties and republished by Sludge in September, don’t technically violate the no-fossil-fuel-money pledge. Still, the South Bend mayor continues to take in campaign cash from the CEOs and top executives of the same private equity firms and hedge funds financing the oil and gas boom fueling the climate crisis. This comes amid mounting scrutiny of his high-dollar fundraisers, which are closed to the press, and past consulting work at McKinsey. (Sludge and the American Prospect also looked into Buttigieg’s contributions from McKinsey alums.) Senior employees of Moelis & Co. have contributed at least $16,800 to Buttigieg — including its CEO Ken Moelis, or “Ken of Arabia,” as one Financial Times headline called him. In 2017, the oil giant selected Moelis as an adviser for its IPO, poised to be the largest in history. The IPO is “expected to reap billions of dollars for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s “social and economic reform program,” the Wall Street Journal wrote. “That effort has come alongside a crackdown on the domestic business community and a silencing of political dissent.” Despite the Saudi government’s unprecedented crackdown on dissent — including the brutal murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 — Moelis was one of several U.S. executives who spoke at the Future Investment Initiative, their annual economic conference.

Photo: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Buttigieg campaign has also received maxed out donations from executives at Atlas Energy, a holding company which seems to only invest in fossil fuel operations; Blackstone Group, a major financier of the oil and gas industries; and Elliot Management, a massive hedge fund, among others. Fuld, the former Lehman Brothers CEO and villain of the 2008 financial crisis, maxed out his contribution to Buttigieg in September. So did his wife, Kathy Fuld. In June, Atlas Energy executive Jonathan Cohen gave Buttigieg’s presidential bid a maximum donation of $5,600. When the donation became public in September, his campaign returned the money. He’s gotten at least $36,400 from top employees at Blackstone Group, including from President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray, senior managing director Bennett Goodman, senior managing director Peter Koffler, and the Private Wealth Solutions’ vice chair Byron Wien. Last year, Blackstone announced it was planning to close on its third energy focused fund in a deal worth at least $3 billion. The private equity group’s role in environmental destruction isn’t just limited to fossil fuels. As The Intercept previously reported, two Brazilian firms owned by Blackstone are “significantly responsible for the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest.”

Accepting money from banks “creates an appearance at the very least that can smell like pay-to-play. It’s not good for the state,” Buttigieg said in 2010.