Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is demanding Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm appear before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to answer why she falsely claimed she did not hold stocks when, in fact, she did.
This month, as Breitbart News reported, Granholm told the committee in a letter that she and her husband had, in fact, held individual stocks in companies that her department oversees — as recently as May of this year.
The admission came more than a month after Granholm falsely testified before the committee that she did not hold individual stocks, saying “No, I’m invested in mutual funds” when Hawley asked, “Do you own individual stocks, Madam Secretary?”
In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Hawley asked that a hearing be scheduled for Granholm to appear before the committee to answer exactly why she seemingly lied about holding stocks.
“I urge you to schedule an oversight hearing as soon as practicable to investigate this matter,” Hawley writes to Manchin:
The facts of Secretary Granholm’s case are disturbing. How do you not know that you own stocks in individual companies? How do you not verify this after you were caught violating ethics laws the first time? And why did she wait seven weeks to correct the record? [Emphasis added]
These latest revelations come in the context of an Energy Department that has been reported to have serious, systemic problems with ethics compliance when it comes to stock ownership and conflicts of interest. I therefore urge you to convene a hearing with Secretary Granholm to discuss both Secretary’s false testimony and the steps the Department is taking to ensure senior officials properly comply with federal ethics laws. [Emphasis added]
Granholm’s admission that she held stocks came after the Wall Street Journal detailed how “one-third of the Energy Department’s senior officials … owned stocks related to the agency’s work,” prompting federal ethics officials to warn them about federal conflict of interest laws.
The Journal reported:
The more than 300 agency officials who received such warnings include nearly six dozen who held stocks of major energy companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. [Emphasis added]
More than 130 officials in the Energy Department collectively reported about 2,700 trades of shares, bonds and options in companies that ethics officers labeled as related to their agency’s work, according to the Journal’s analysis, which examined only disclosures by officials who filed annual reports in that period. [Emphasis added]
…
In a series of articles last fall, the Journal reported that across 50 federal agencies, more than 2,600 government officials reported investments that stood to rise or fall with the decisions made by their agencies. [Emphasis added]
Granholm, in 2021, reportedly violated the STOCK Act when she failed to properly report nine stock trades, including her selling shares of Uber, Redfin, and Gilead Sciences Inc., which enjoys lucrative government contracts.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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