(PatriotWise.com) — The ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is asking the Department of Energy’s watchdog to investigate Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm after she admitted that she lied about her stock holdings during testimony earlier this year, the Associated Press reported.
On Wednesday, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) asked the Inspector General for the Energy Department to investigate Granholm’s “multiple instances of questionable ethical conduct” since she took over the DoE in 2021.
In a letter to DoE Inspector General Teri Donaldson, Barrasso notes that Granholm failed to inform the committee that her husband owned stock in Ford Motor Company, a central player in the Biden administration’s push to boost the sale of electric vehicles and improve fuel efficiency for cars and trucks.
On June 9, Granholm sent a letter to the committee chair, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) revealing that she owned stocks as recently as May, despite telling the committee in April that she owned no individual stocks. The Energy Secretary also admitted that her husband owned stock in Ford. She conceded that she should not have told the committee that she owned no “conflicting stocks.”
Granholm admitted in her letter to Manchin that she owned stock in six companies deemed “non-conflicting assets” by DoE ethics officials but has sold them. While she refused to identify the six companies or the value of the stocks, Granholm said this information would be included in her June financial disclosure report.
A spokesman for the DoE Office of the Inspector General confirmed that Donaldson had received Barrasso’s letter and was reviewing it.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Department of Energy said that Secretary Granholm divested of conflicting assets that were known during her confirmation in a timely manner. Subsequently, Granholm also divested assets that she was not “legally required to sell,” the spokesman said.
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