1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

Reuters has the story. John Addison managed gasoline at a company named Vitol, which is the biggest energy trader in the world. In 2022 he gave 300,000 dollars to the super PAC that carried JD Vance to the Senate. The generosity didn’t stop there. In 2024 he and his wife gave five million to a MAGA PAC. In December, flight records put his jet and Air Force Two on the same tarmac in Montana. Vance was visiting the Yellowstone Club, where Addison is building a house on a 16 million dollar lot. That day, Vance posed a hypothetical: if the US were to control Venezuelan crude, how fast could it be sold? A week later, American forces took Maduro. Right after that, Addison got a phone call from Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Addison says he figured Wright just wanted an update on the oil market. He was wrong. Wright wanted to talk about Venezuela. So how did the energy secretary know to call him? Addison told Reuters that JD Vance had vouched for him. Within days, Vitol and one other trading house had special licenses. No competitive bidding. Soon after, Addison was next to the CEOs of Exxon and Chevron, pledging to help the president move Venezuelan oil around the world. Venezuela has exported more than 200 million barrels this year. An energy finance professor puts the traders’ cut at three dollars a barrel or more. Hundreds of millions. Addison retired in March and now chairs Wright’s energy advisory board. No wonder. Everyone denies the Montana meeting. Addison calls it made up. The Energy Department says Vance and Wright never discussed Venezuelan oil. Vitol says it had no advance knowledge of the raid. Even before this, Addison’s hands weren’t clean. In 2024, Vitol paid California 50 million dollars to settle a gasoline price manipulation case, and Addison was named as the most senior executive in the alleged scheme. No admission of wrongdoing. It’s pretty ironic. Just this week, Trump pulled Vance off the Iran War and told him to go find corruption in blue states. The same week, Reuters reports the vice president’s early donor got a no-bid contract for a country’s oil.