RALEIGH — Private investigators hired by a legislative subcommittee concluded it would be reasonable to find that Roy Cooper improperly used the governor’s office to get Atlantic Coast Pipeline developers to commit to a mitigation fund he would control, and then to hold up a water-quality permit until that commitment rose from $55 million to $57.8 million.
That is an investigative conclusion, not a verdict. The Nov. 20, 2019 report, by Eagle Intel Services for the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations subcommittee on the pipeline, named no criminal statute and no defendant. It said the work was not done to identify crimes. It also said the information “suggests that criminal violations may have occurred.” No criminal charge from that inquiry turned up in the materials reviewed for this story. Cooper has not been convicted of anything connected to the fund.
The same report said no information showed that Cooper personally benefited from the fund or from a solar-industry settlement negotiated alongside it.
What the paper changed
The pipeline partnership’s first draft, the investigators wrote, was an agreement with the State of North Carolina for $55 million, aimed at environmental mitigation. The version signed on Jan. 25, 2018 was different.
The counterparty became “Roy Cooper, Governor of North Carolina, in his official capacity.” The money was to go into an escrow account designated by a third party the governor selected. The uses were expanded to economic development and renewable-energy projects along the route, on top of mitigation. Disbursement was to follow a later executive order. The investigators wrote that no such order was signed.
William McKinney, general counsel in the governor’s office, signed the memorandum. The next day, Jan. 26, 2018, the Department of Environmental Quality issued the Clean Water Act certification the project needed. The certification is a DEQ action. It is not a permit with the governor’s signature on it.
The investigators’ conclusion was that Cooper had used the delay. They wrote that it would be reasonable to conclude he caused the partnership to commit to $55 million “under his complete control,” then kept using his office to delay permitting until the partners agreed to $57.8 million.
Two accounts of the same weeks
Cooper’s office told legislators the fund and the permit were not the same negotiation.
On Feb. 8, 2018, legislative affairs director Lee Lilley told a joint appropriations committee the memorandum was voluntary and separate from the water certification. On Feb. 15, 2018, chief of staff Kristi Jones wrote that “the mitigation fund was established independently of the DEQ permitting process.”
The investigative file, as the report presents it, does not read that way. A text the investigators attribute to senior adviser Ken Eudy on Jan. 2, 2018 says: “Not sure we should sign ACP unless solar deal works.” Duke Energy chief executive Lynn Good told the investigators she did not believe the fund or the solar settlement had any bearing on the permit. Her words in the report: “Duke did not and would not pay for permits.”
Eudy was asked about this under oath on Nov. 8, 2019. He answered “No, Sir” when asked whether the governor, at a Nov. 30, 2017 meeting, had asked Duke to create an economic-development fund. He answered “No, Sir” when asked whether he had told anyone the governor would decide the certification. He answered “No, Sir” when asked whether he had asked Duke for a statement that the fund was voluntary.
The investigators wrote that Duke executive Kathy Hawkins gave them a different account: that on Dec. 19, 2017 Eudy told her the governor, not DEQ Secretary Michael Regan, would decide the certification, and that on Feb. 8, 2018 Eudy asked her for a letter calling the $57.8 million voluntary. She said Duke refused to write it. Those are interview memos set against sworn answers. They are not a finding that Eudy committed perjury. He has not been charged.
A second conclusion in the report deals with a fight between Duke and solar developers over how much solar older, higher-priced contracts could still cover. The investigators wrote that it would be reasonable to conclude Cooper pressured a settlement “that favored the solar industry at the cost of $100 Million to the ratepayers.” They wrote that Good had told Cooper a deal could erase about $180 million of the savings in a 2017 energy law, and that the settlement actually reached cost about $100 million in lost savings. Chris Ayers, executive director of the Public Staff, told them the agreement avoided a lawsuit that could have cost ratepayers more. Duke said it would not have settled without the Public Staff.
The money never had a finished path
The General Assembly did not leave the memorandum where it was. Session Law 2018-2 said a state officer could accept the funds only if public school units in the pipeline counties were the sole recipients, split by student counts and by miles of pipe. The section was written to take effect Jan. 25, 2018. Cooper did not sign the bill. It became law on March 16, 2018, after the signing deadline passed.
On July 5, 2020, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy cancelled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. They said delay and cost had destroyed the case for putting in more shareholder money. The project had been announced at $4.5 billion to $5 billion. Their public estimate by then was $8 billion.
This newsroom did not find a Department of Public Instruction report showing that school systems ever received the $57.8 million. The investigative report said the executive order that was supposed to direct the money was never signed. The story of the fund is a signed memorandum, a statutory redirect, and a cancelled project. It is not a story of cash delivered to the governor.
Land near the route
The report spends a section on whether Cooper’s family could have gained.
Deeds and a lease the investigators cite show that in December 2012 Roy Cooper, his wife Kristin, his brother Pell Cooper and Pell’s wife Meredith transferred Nash County parcels into Will Clark Properties. In January 2013 that company leased 40 acres to Strata Solar Development. Pell Cooper signed the lease. Secretary of State annual reports cited in the file list Roy Cooper as a company official of Will Clark in 2013 and 2014. Later reports list Pell, then Meredith. The investigators wrote that the lease stayed in the family.
They also cited tax listings for Sapony Creek Properties, more than 300 acres in Nash County, a county on the planned route. Annual reports they cited list Roy Cooper as the sole company official in 2019.
Strata, through attorney Hampton Dellinger, refused interviews. The company told investigators the Will Clark ground lease was the only lease it found under the Cooper names it was asked to search. The investigators wrote that they found no information that Cooper or his family had a solar project in the line of contracts the settlement would have helped.
Their inference was narrower than a payout. If the memorandum had been funded, they wrote, Cooper “would have been in a position to benefit,” because the paper allowed renewable-energy spending near the route and he owned land near that route. The next sentence says they had no direct information that he intended to use the money on that land. The conclusion of the report is that no information showed he personally benefited from the fund or the solar settlement.
A figure of more than $1 million, sometimes attached to the lease in political argument, is not in the report. It is not used here.
A federal penalty that does not name him
On April 15, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered American Efficient and affiliated companies to pay a $722 million civil penalty and to return $407,732,930 to the PJM grid operator and $2,084,828 to the Midcontinent grid operator, plus interest. The Commission called the conduct “a scam for the history books.” It described a years-long claim on capacity payments for energy savings the Commission said the companies did not cause. That is a civil penalty order. It is not a criminal conviction. The order does not mention Cooper.
The order also does not mention J. Adam Abram. On Nov. 12, 2019, the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency said Cooper had appointed Abram chair of its board. A political tip has treated that appointment, family political gifts, and Cooper’s clean-energy orders as one story with the penalty. This desk did not confirm those gifts from the filings, did not confirm that Abram controls the companies FERC penalized, and did not find a North Carolina contract tying Executive Order 80, Cooper’s 2018 clean-energy order, to American Efficient. The Commission’s case is about PJM and MISO wholesale markets. Treating the penalty as money Cooper arranged is campaign rhetoric, not a finding in the order.
What the SBI director alleged
In separate testimony, on March 28, 2023, State Bureau of Investigation Director Bob Schurmeier told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that Cooper’s staff had pressed him to resign. The committee’s account of that hearing says Jones asked for his resignation and general counsel Eric Fletcher threatened an investigation of the bureau. Schurmeier denied wrongdoing. Those are his allegations. They are not a finding that anyone broke the law.
Jones and Fletcher testified on May 2, 2023. The committee’s account of that hearing says Jones denied intimidation and interference, said Schurmeier had mischaracterized the meetings, and described the dealings as collaborative on hiring, training, recruitment and retention. A claim that Schurmeier was forced to hire a former member of Cooper’s attorney general staff is not in those committee accounts, and it is not repeated here. Schurmeier was not charged. Neither were the aides.
Earlier coverage: Cooper’s 2000 ad, the Boyce settlement, and the 2026 fight over the word “hired”, Cooper on the Republican money edge, and Whatley’s Dallas speech calling Cooper a radical.
Source note
Tip only: Breitbart, Sept. 28, 2026, https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/28/inside-democrat-roy-coopers-culture-of-corruption-as-governor/
The account rests on the Eagle Intel Services report to the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations subcommittee on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Nov. 20, 2019 (https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewDocSiteFile/12924); Session Law 2018-2, Part I (https://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/SessionLaws/HTML/2017-2018/SL2018-2.html); Dominion Energy and Duke Energy, “Dominion Energy and Duke Energy cancel the Atlantic Coast Pipeline,” July 5, 2020 (https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/dominion-energy-and-duke-energy-cancel-the-atlantic-coast-pipeline); Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, executive summary of the order assessing civil penalties regarding American Efficient, LLC, April 15, 2026, Docket No. IN24-2-000 (https://www.ferc.gov/executive-summary-order-assessing-civil-penalties-regarding-american-efficient-llc); North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, “J. Adam Abram Appointed Chair of North Carolina Housing Finance Agency Board of Directors,” Nov. 12, 2019; N.C. House Oversight and Reform Committee, hearing summaries of March 28, 2023 and May 2, 2023 (https://sites.ncleg.gov/houseoversight/2023/03/schurmeier-governors-staff-interfered-with-sbi-independence/ and https://sites.ncleg.gov/houseoversight/2023/05/governors-staff-and-sbi-general-counsel-provide-few-answers/).
Cover: Former Gov. Roy Cooper at a campaign rally in April 2026. Photo by NetwonsBucket / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
