(PatriotWise.com) — More than a dozen watchdog groups last week sent a letter to President Joe Biden demanding that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm resign over her “repeated ethical lapses,” the Washington Examiner reported.
In their five-page letter, the heads of 15 conservative groups, including the Heartland Institute, Eagle Forum, American Accountability Foundation, Media Research Center, and Protect the Public’s Trust, alleged that Secretary Granholm has “disregarded” and failed to prioritize her ethical obligations “at every turn.”
The letter cites some examples of Granholm’s murky ethics and conflicts of interest since assuming office in 2021 and demands her “immediate resignation.”
Last month, an ethics complaint was filed against Secretary Granholm by Protect the Public’s Trust over conflict of interest concerns after she admitted to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June that her husband held stock in Ford while the Biden administration was approving electric vehicle subsidies that would likely benefit the automaker.
Granholm told the committee that she hadn’t reported the shares in Ford on her financial disclosures because she didn’t know about them at the time. She also told the senators that she “mistakenly” claimed that she did not own any individual stock during testimony in April, claiming she meant to say she owned no “conflicting stocks.”
In their letter, the conservative groups cite the stock in Ford as an example of Granholm’s ethical lapses. They also point to Granholm’s previous position on the board of electric bus maker Proterra before she was confirmed by the Senate in 2021.
In May 2021, Granholm sold 240,000 shares in the company for $1.6 million after Republican lawmakers and government watchdogs raised concerns about the conflict of interest since members of the Biden administration, including from the Department of Energy, appeared at events boosting Proterra and providing the company with federal subsidies.
Proterra filed for bankruptcy last week.
In their letter, the groups note that since Biden took office, his administration has boasted of its “commitment to ethics” and called on the president to stop paying “lip service” and demonstrate to the American people that the boasts “have meaning.”
Copyright 2023, PatriotWise.com
