PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Dec. 2. FIRST IN PI: The legislative information service LegiStorm recently rejected an overture to buy its data from LobbyMatic, the company trying to integrate AI into lobbying that was covertly run by far-right conspiracy theorists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, Daniel reports. — LegiStorm and LobbyMatic had talks in the late summer on a potential contract and after several emails were exchanged between the parties in the fall, Legistorm founder and CEO Jock Friedly cut off the discussions in early November, according to emails obtained by PI. — “We are not interested. We will also treat any attempts at accessing our data in any way as a hostile act intended to defraud us and others and will involve lawyers and law enforcement as need be,” Friedly said in the email addressed to “Jay,” the pseudonym of Wohl. “Seek your data elsewhere.” — In a brief interview, Wohl said he had reached out to LegiStorm and a few other vendors to improve his company’s database of congressional directories. — “The way that we would gather those directories is costly since interns have to collect business cards and see if people are working there,” he said. He added that he believed that Friedly’s apparent progressive ideology was one reason that LegiStorm rejected working with LobbyMatic and that the firm eventually got the data from a different vendor, the name of which he declined to share. (Friedly told PI his company doesn’t discriminate against clients because of ideology.) — While Wohl introduced himself on the phone as “Jacob Wohl,” he also now sometimes goes by “Jay Wohl,” an agglomeration of his original name and his pseudonym “Jay Klein” that he went by when covertly running the company, according to his email signature. Wohl didn't respond to a follow-up question about what name he is going by now. Happy Tuesday and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. CAR PARTS GROUP TELLS TRUMP TO NIX TAILPIPE RULES: While parts of the auto industry are hoping to convince President-elect Donald Trump to keep intact a series of climate rules aimed at incentivizing the transition to electric vehicles, a trade group representing sellers of aftermarket car parts wants to make sure Trump makes good on his promise to tear those regulations down. — “It is disheartening to hear that some within the automotive industry are seeking to largely keep the Biden Administration’s tailpipe rules in place. On behalf of SEMA’s members, we support your stated goal of a ‘Day 1’ end to EV mandates,” Mike Spagnola, the president and CEO of the Specialty Equipment Market Association, wrote in a letter to Trump on Monday. — Spagnola is referring to a suite of Biden administration regulations including strict tailpipe emissions and fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and tax credits for EV purchases that critics have derided as a “mandate” aimed at forcing the abandonment of cars that run on gas. — In recent letters to both Trump and Hill Republicans, one of the auto industry’s top lobbying groups, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, has appealed to the GOP to largely preserve some of those rules and tax incentives for the sake of having a “stable and predictable regulatory environment,” and to help automakers compete with a global transition toward EVs — even as the group criticized headwinds caused by “federal and state emissions regulations (particularly in California and affiliated states) that are out-of-step with current auto market realities and increase costs for consumers.” — The New York Times reported last week that several major automakers are preparing to lobby Trump for more time to comply with the climate rules and lesser penalties for violators. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest allies has called for doing away with the EV tax credits — a move that would likely be a bigger blow to Tesla’s competitors. — “For thousands of businesses in the specialty automotive aftermarket,” Spagnola wrote, “de facto electric vehicle mandates … pose an existential crisis that would shutter businesses and put too many Americans out of work.” — Spagnola highlighted EPA’s tailpipe standards and a California rule that would ban the sale of new gas-only cars by 2035, in particular, noting that around a third of SEMA’s members “make products specifically for internal combustion engine (ICE) engines. If the current EV mandates (or otherwise put, ICE bans) are allowed to remain in place, this puts over $100 million of economic impact to the U.S. economy and over 300,000 American automotive jobs at risk.” ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE, PART I: Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic representative and one-time presidential candidate tapped as Trump's director of national intelligence, has cobbled together a network of super PACs over the past few years that have raised several million dollars, including from top Republican donors, David Corn reports for Mother Jones. But the groups keep spending most of that money on vendors and consultants — raising questions about the purpose of all the PACs. — One PAC called Defend Freedom, Inc. raised $1.9 million from tens of thousands of donors, spending just $20,000 supporting Republican congressional candidates like Kari Lake, Joe Kent and former Texas Rep. Mayra Flores, while dropping $1.3 million on operating expenditures. “Like many PACs, it acted mainly as a money-churning machine that generated donations that mostly profited vendors and consultants,” Corn writes. — That pattern was replicated across the other groups Gabbard formed, which vowed to support candidates fighting for Americans’ freedoms. One super PAC, For Love of Country, Inc., pulled in $280,000 from a handful of Republican megadonors including casino magnate Steve Wynn and construction executive John Calnan. — The PAC spent just $49,000 on an event and payments to Gabbard aides, while yet another PAC formed in 2023 “raised only $45,000, with the lion’s share of that money going to pay Gabbard’s spokesperson and another adviser.” ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE, PART II: As Future Forward, the primary super PAC that supported Vice President Kamala Harris in the election faces questions about its spending in the aftermath of her loss, The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky reports that the PAC and its affiliated nonprofit arm paid “companies owned by or otherwise linked to its founders more than $10 million for consulting services” between 2022 and 2024. — “The donor money — paid out to GCJ Research, PFB Media, and OpenLabs — was part of a massive spending spree from pro-Harris groups and the Harris campaign. … Future Forward co-founders Chauncey McLean, Gaurav Shirole, and Jon Fromowitz are all either co-owners or helped launch the three companies, which could raise conflict of interest questions.” WILES’ ENERGY LOBBYING: E&E News’ Hannah Northey and Robin Bravender dug into incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ energy lobbying clients at Ballard Partners, which included advocacy for the stalled Pebble mine project in Alaska, coal giant Alliance Resource Partners and LNG companies American GTL Energy Holdings and Eagle LNG. — Wiles also lobbied on issues like renewable energy policy and sustainability on behalf of right-leaning climate group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions as well as General Motors, which has been a vocal supporter of the electric vehicle tax incentives included in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
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