Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has called on the Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Energy to investigate Secretary Jennifer Granholm for allegedly misleading Congress about her stock holdings.
Granholm had previously claimed that she did not own individual stocks, a statement that has since been proven false.
As reported by Breitbart News in June, Granholm admitted in a letter to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she and her husband had owned individual stocks in companies overseen by her department as recently as May this year.
This revelation came over a month after Granholm testified before the same committee that she did not own individual stocks, stating, No, Im invested in mutual funds.
In light of these revelations, Senator Hawley has requested the Energy Department IG to probe into Granholm's stock holdings and her alleged repeated violations of federal ethics rules. In his letter, Hawley wrote, I write to formally request you open an investigation into Secretary Granholms misleading testimonyI also request you conduct an audit of the Departments compliance with existing ethics laws to determine whether senior officials own shares in companies they regulate.
The senator further highlighted Granholm's alleged violation of federal stock trading laws as the latest in a series of ethical indiscretions. He also expressed concern over other officials at the Energy Department who may have traded stocks while in office, and requested an audit of the Department's employees to ensure compliance with ethics rules concerning individual stock ownership.
Hawley emphasized that the repeated ethics violations by Energy Department officials undermine public trust in the government and the rule of law. Granholm's admission of owning stocks followed a Wall Street Journal report detailing that one-third of the Energy Departments senior officials owned stocks related to the agencys work. This prompted federal ethics officials to issue warnings about potential conflicts of interest.
The Wall Street Journal report also revealed that nearly six dozen officials had made trades that ethics officers labeled as concerning. The Journal's analysis only examined disclosures by officials who filed annual reports during that period.
In a series of articles last fall, the Journal reported that several officials owned stocks that could be affected by their agencies' decisions. Hawley also noted that in 2021, Granholm reportedly violated the STOCK Act by failing to properly report nine stock trades, including selling shares of Uber, Redfin, and Gilead Sciences Inc., which have lucrative government contracts.
Login