This oil tycoon brings in millions for Trump, and may set his agenda
Harold Hamm has become Trump’s point person in raising funds from oil industry donors and relaying to the ex-president what the industry wants.

By Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow
August 13, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

After Donald Trump asked the oil industry to contribute $1 billion to his presidential campaign in April, oil baron Harold Hamm immediately started working the phones.

Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources, called other oil executives and encouraged them to attend fundraisers and open their wallets, according to people with knowledge of the outreach, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

“We’ve got to do this because it’s the most important election in our lifetime,” Hamm said as he made calls after the April dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, where the former president made the audacious fundraising ask, according to an associate. … Another person familiar with the matter said Hamm railed against President Joe Biden’s energy policies and argued that even if donors didn’t love Trump, it made sense to support the former president. In recent months, Hamm has also orchestrated some introductions between oil executives and Trump, and Trump has now “called almost everyone in the sector,” said a person involved in the industry.

Hamm, a sharecropper’s son who rose to become one of the world’s richest men, would seem to be an unlikely power broker. He doesn’t travel with an entourage and doesn’t keep a high profile. Yet he has emerged as a central figure in cajoling the oil industry to finance Trump’s reelection bid, and in communicating to the ex-president what the oil industry wants to improve its fortunes in a second Trump term.

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His message appears to be resonating with some of the country’s wealthiest oil magnates, who are banking on Trump’s promises to reverse dozens of Biden’s environmental rules and policies.

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President Donald Trump shakes hands with Continental Resources chief executive Harold Hamm as he arrives at the Shale Insight Conference in Pittsburgh in 2019. (Evan Vucci/AP)

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By Josh Dawsey
Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal. Twitter

By Maxine Joselow
Maxine Joselow is a staff writer who covers climate change and the environment. Twitter