The Republican senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, wants the Energy Department’s IG to look into whether Secretary Jennifer Granholm was lying to Congress when she said she didn’t hold individual stocks, but she really did.
Granholm testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June, as Breitbart News revealed, admitting that she and her spouse had personally owned equities in the corporations under her department’s jurisdiction as recently as May.
A little over a month before the shocking admission, Granholm lied to the committee and said she only owned mutual funds and not any individual stocks.
“Madam Secretary, do you hold individual stocks?” Granholm said, “No, I’m invested in mutual funds,” in response to Hawley’s question.
At this point, Hawley wants the Energy Department’s inspector general to look into Granholm’s stock holdings “as well as her frequent violations of federal ethics laws.”
“I am writing to officially ask that you begin to look into Secretary Granholm’s false statements. I also ask that you check to see if the Department is following existing ethics laws and see if senior officials hold shares in companies that they regulate,” Hawley writes.
“Secretary Granholm’s most recent breach of federal securities laws is the most recent in a string of unethical actions. Before she lied to the Committee, Secretary Granholm had broken federal rules nine times about telling people about her stocks. Then, when I asked Secretary Granholm a total of three times during her April 20, 2023, hearing before the Committee, she said that she no longer owned any stocks. It wasn’t true. She had shares in six different companies at the time.”
“Rather than being transparent about her ongoing stock ownership or her deceptive statements, Secretary Granholm postponed selling the equities she still had until May 18, 2023. After a few more weeks, she told the Energy Committee that what she had told us was not true.”
“There are other officials at the Energy Department besides Secretary Granholm who have engaged in stock trading throughout their tenure. We found out in February of this year that government workers in the Energy Department own stocks in companies that deal with energy. Along with your investigation into Secretary Granholm, I also ask that you check the ethics of Department of Energy workers to see if they are following the rules about owning individual stocks.”
“Senior government officials shouldn’t trade stocks, especially stocks in companies that they are in charge of. People don’t trust our government or the rule of law as much as they used to because Energy Department employees keep breaking the rules of ethics.”
Granholm acknowledged owning equities when the Wall Street Journal revealed that “one-third of the Energy Department’s top officials… held stocks related to their agency’s work,” which prompted federal ethics officers to alert them to federal conflicts of interest regulations.
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