09/25/2026
TRUMP CONFIRMS DOJ HAMMER ON BIG OIL AS “SMOKING-GUN” EMAILS IMPLICATE SENATE DEMOCRATS IN A PUMP-PRICE SCHEME
By Jonathan Gregory
Washington, D.C. - September 18, 2026
President Donald Trump has confirmed he ordered a major Justice Department investigation into ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and other oil giants for gouging Americans at the pump, after crude prices collapsed and gasoline refused to follow. “The oil companies are possibly gouging. I hope they’re not. Otherwise they’re going to be in BIG trouble,” Trump said. “We should be in my opinion at $2.25 right now at the pump, and we’re higher than that. And we are doing a big investigation on it.” The probe explodes beyond corporate pricing when investigators claim they have uncovered emails in which oil executives were told to keep pump prices as high as they could, and promised they would be shielded from persecution if they played along.
The paper trail is said to show Senate Democrats pushing legislation designed not to lower prices, but to protect the arrangement and advance Democratic officials in the Senate. According to the emails, company leaders were instructed that high prices were the point, that Washington allies would keep them safe, and that the payoff was political muscle for Democratic senators who needed industry cooperation, campaign infrastructure, and a quiet energy market they could blame on everyone except themselves. Oil had tanked. The pump had not. That gap was not a lag in the market, it was a deal.
Trump’s warning is aimed at both the boardroom and the Capitol. If the companies held prices up after oil crashed, they face the Justice Department. If Democratic senators wrote the script, promised protection, and used the scheme to push their own people, they are in the blast radius too. The president’s line stays the same: $2.25 was the number Americans should already be seeing, the investigation is “big,” and nobody, not Exxon, not Chevron, not Shell, not BP, and not the senators who swore to keep them safe, gets a pass for squeezing drivers at the pump.
