Whether it’s her “Cheshire Cat” grin and cackle when asked about decreasing federal clamps on domestic energy production, her flip and fatuous claim that the US military ought to go “all electric,” or her new support for Ford’s former “top” EV lobbyist to join her as a “top” tax-paid “advisor,” reporting on US “Secretary of Energy” Jennifer Granholm makes the term “peeling the political onion” an understatement.
As time passes, those who have wondered about her asinine, authoritarian positions, her sketchy history as Michigan Governor (2003-2011), and her sketchy “investment” history are faced with more and more to question.
Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times:
“A top official in President Joe Biden’s administration has admitted to lying to Congress when she claimed not to own individual stocks.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Graholm, a Biden appointee, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on April 20 that she did not own individual stocks, instead owning mutual funds.
Granholm said in a letter on June 9 to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) that she was not truthful during the Capitol Hill appearance.
‘I mistakenly told the Committee that I did not own any individual stocks, whereas I should have said that I did not own any conflicting stocks,’ Granholm wrote in the missive, which was obtained and reviewed by The Epoch Times.”
In April, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Senator @HawleyMO (under oath) that she did not own individual stocks.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 9, 2023
She was lying. Today, Granholm admitted she did, in fact, own stock in MULTIPLE companies — including Ford, which falls directly in her jurisdiction. pic.twitter.com/qayLbz131d
But this is not the first time she “mistakenly” didn’t report required details about her investments and stock sales. Shifting from her post as Michigan Governor to her slot as “Energy Secretary” – where she could harangue us for using gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs – Granholm in 2021 got very little exposure for violation of the 2012 “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act that included big sales of US-COVID-policy-boosted pharma stock and more, totaling nearly a quarter-million dollars in 2021. As Business Insider reported in January of 2022:
“Granholm — one of the Biden administration's highest-ranking officials whose personal finances have come under previous scrutiny — reported making nine stock trades between April 30, 2021, and October 26, 2021.
But she disclosed these trades to the Office of Government Ethics on December 15, 2021, and December 16, 2021 — either weeks or months past a 30-day disclosure deadline prescribed by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012.
Granholm's stock sales involved shares of biopharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences Inc. — a major government contractor and maker of COVID-19 treatment remdesivir — mobility service Uber, and real estate company Redfin.”
Classy.
But, as troubling as those moves have been, questions about her investments and possible benefits from political positions go much deeper.
In fact, they go back to 2009, the Obama-RINO “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” and bailouts of auto-makers such as General Motors.
At that time, Michigan Governor Granholm lobbied hard for GM (and its big union powers) to get the nearly $50 billion in direct federal “bailout” cash and years of absolution from corporate taxes worth added billions.
Guess what corporation brought Granholm onto its board in 2017?
Here’s part of Proterra’s press release, from March of that year:
“Today Proterra, the leading innovator in heavy-duty electric bus transportation, announced that Jennifer Granholm, former attorney general and two-term governor of Michigan, has joined its board of directors.”
Or, perhaps there was, and there IS.
Related: Feds Ready a Ban On Incandescent Light Bulbs | MRCTV
Breitbart reported as far back as November, 2021 that the Granholm-Proterra relationship appears to be larger than just the initial appearance of board-placing favoritism and thanks for the GM-tied boost. It has to do with stock options…
“President Joe Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is the subject of an ethics complaint for promoting, in her role as a member of the executive branch, an electric bus company she sat on the board of and held over a million dollars of stock in.
Granholm — who oversees moving the country toward an electric vehicle transportation system and enjoys newfound powers after the passage of Biden’s infrastructure package — is facing scrutiny for promoting Proterra, a Burlingame, California-based electric bus company she sat on the board of and held 240,520 shares of stock in, which garnered her $1.6 million when she finally divested them 157 days after her nomination.”
And there’s more:
“Granholm’s promotion of the Burlingame, California electric vehicle company came at the same time that Democrats in Congress were crafting—and ultimately passing—Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, which dramatically increases Granholm’s authority as energy secretary to advance private sector companies in the transition to an electric vehicle-based transportation infrastructure. The infrastructure package — which has been promoted by Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Granholm, Biden’s Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and other members of the administration — grants as much as $174 billion to green vehicles and $45 billion to zero-emission buses to ‘replace 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrify at least 20 percent of our yellow school bus fleet” and “to build a national network of 500,000 EV chargers by 2030.’
The California-based Proterra stands to benefit greatly from this Biden administration electric vehicle investment. It is perhaps unsurprising then that the Center for Responsive Politics found that nearly 85 percent of Proterra’s employee campaign contributions went to Democrats, including Biden.”
And there’s even MORE:
“After serving on Proterra’s board for roughly three years, Granholm was nominated to be Biden’s secretary of energy on December 18, 2020, and was later confirmed on February 25. During her confirmation process, Granholm signed an ethics agreement letter on January 16, in which she promised to step down from the Proterra board and divest her Proterra stock ‘as soon as practicable but not later than 180 days after my confirmation.’
Within that months-long period following Granholm’s nomination, Proterra’s stock price was potentially boosted by her nomination, as well as by the administration’s continued hyping of the company at various events. Although the company was not yet publicly traded at the time that Granholm sold her shares, there are indications that the Biden administration’s hyping of Proterra benefitted the company during this period, as was apparent when the stock of a company merging with Proterra spiked following a Biden event at a Proterra plant in April.”
And we have not reached the core of the effluviant Granholm onion, because the new facet is this June 9 admission to Joe Manchin’s Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee that she kinda, maybe, sorta, wasn’t completely open about her investments.
Speaking to Manchin’s committee in April, Granholm claimed she had divested from assets that could conflict with her duties as part of being confirmed as Energy Secretary but that she held onto stocks that federal ethics bureaucrats determined would not conflict with those duties.
And she now claims that she has sold those stocks in the passing months.
Write’s Stieber, for Epoch Times:
“Granholm did not identify the companies. She said they would be identified on her annual disclosure report, which is expected to be available in mid-June.”
This sure seems like a lot of hemming, hawing, and delaying for a political figure who claims to be able to dictate the kinds of lightbulbs and stoves and fuel we use.
One wonders how much more suspicious activity we can see before Granholm takes her tax-fed grin and departs. As Breitbart noted in 2021, she’s already offered a lot for us to find questionable:
“On May 7 (2021), over two months after her confirmation, Granholm officially received an ethics waiver from the Office of Government Ethics to sell off her 240,520 shares of Proterra stock, after receiving backlash from Republicans in the House and Senate for her failure to divest this stock while the administration was promoting the company.
The waiver allowed Granholm to defer capital gains taxes when she unloaded the Proterra stock as long as she reinvested the money into a ‘permitted property’ within 60 days. When Granholm sold her Proterra stock on May 24, which was 88 days after her confirmation and 157 days after her nomination, she netted a capital gain of $1.6 million, according to the Department of Energy. However, it is unclear where Granholm reinvested this money and whether that investment could also pose a potential conflict of interest, considering how vast and complex the electric vehicle supply chain is.”
What’s most important is that the US Constitution is not complex. It’s brief, readable, and clear. Regardless of Granholm’s sketchy doings and lack of transparency, the post of “Energy Secretary” is not sanctioned by the founding document.
And her laughs and grins cannot hide that most fundamental fact.
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