American Encore (formerly known as The Center to Protect Patient Rights) is a Koch-funded money laundering organization run by Sean Noble that has worked to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, and has funded attacks on solar energy in Arizona.
Sean Noble was also a paid lobbyist and consultant for Pinnacle West Capital Corporation, Arizona Public Service’s parent company, and has consulted with 60 Plus Association and Prosper, two front groups involved in attacks on Arizona solar in the past few years. Noble provided the pass-through for APS to launder money to the two non-profit organizations involved in the attack on the state’s net metering policy.
Noble oversaw millions of dollars in political spending that the Koch Brothers routed through various nonprofits and LLCs to obscure their funding sources. The Koch Brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on their political network (and used the Center to Protect Patient Rights as a pass through for political contributions to numerous organizations). The Koch Brothers’ supposed “free market” political activities often line up with the financial interests of Koch Industries, the second largest privately held corporation in the United States and a major fossil fuel conglomerate (it invests in coal, oil, and natural gas, among many other sectors). The Center to Protect Patient Rights has funded American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, and other fossil fuel-funded front groups that have attacked clean energy in the past.
Noble’s Center to Protect Patient Rights and Kirk Adam’s Americans for Responsible Leadership were fined a record $1 million by the State of California for failing to comply with California law. The groups funneled $15 million into California’s ballot proposition fights in 2012. A spokesman for Koch Industries said regarding the California fines, “We had no involvement whatsoever…” but Ann Ravel, the head of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, countered that Charles and David Koch were behind a complex network of groups transferring money to influence the outcome of ballot propositions in the State of California.
