Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has joined the boards of two energy companies, one of which was part of a consortium that received more than half a billion dollars in tax money before she left her position.
She has joined the boards of Edison International and its subsidiary, Southern California Edison.
Less than a year ago, Just the News reported, Granholm’s Department of Energy (DOE) gave a consortium including Southern California Edison $600 million.
During her tenure at DOE, Granholm was the focus of multiple allegations of unethical behavior.
Granholm is a Canadian-born lawyer who was governor of Michigan and a law professor. She was a member of the board of directors of Dow Chemical when President Joe Biden picked her to be secretary of energy.
Just the News reviewed Granholm’s shady career at the Energy Department.
“Her tenure was marred by controversy and ethics questions,” the website reported:
In May 2021, four months after Granholm’s confirmation hearing, it was reported that she had held shares in Proterra, an electric bus company that the Biden-Harris administration had heavily promoted. According to the Associated Press, she told [C]ongress in 2023 that “she mistakenly provided false information about her family’s stock holdings” in testimony that year. Graholm had by then divested of those shares, earning a profit of $1.6 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
In April 2021, Granholm had told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she owned no individual stocks and only invested in mutual funds. In February 2023, U.S. ethics officials, The Wall Street Journal reported, warned top officials at the Energy Department, including Granholm, that they or their family members owned stocks that could violate conflict-of-interest rules.
In June of 2023, Granholm confirmed to the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources that she had owned stocks in six companies, which U.S. ethics officials had judged to be “non-conflicting.” Her husband had a previously undisclosed investment in Ford Motor Company. She said in a letter to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she had “mistakenly” testified she didn’t own any individual stocks. The committee took no further action.
Proterra went bankrupt in August 2023, and left transit districts across the country with broken buses that couldn’t be repaired.
She was also involved in a droll fiasco involving electric vehicles, and GOP U.S. Senator Josh Hawley of Arkansas and public interest groups called for her resignation. Those groups included a government watchdog called Protect the Public’s Trust, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request for her calendar.
The calendar showed that Granholm met with Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates, after which DOE handed him $2 billion “in a 50-50 cost-share program for Gates’ Terra Power Natrium reactor in Wyoming.”
“Granholm also met with Gates on Aug. 2 and Aug. 11, 2021,” Just the News continued. Next day, the two said DOE would waste $1.5 billion on another of Gates’ companies, Breakthrough Energy, “to develop ‘clean energy technology demonstrations.’”
DOE had also given out $385 billion in loans, Just the News reported, without “maintaining standards to avoid a conflict of interest.”
Granholm’s vast contribution at DOE included the agency’s awarding $14 billion in loans “to Michigan renewable energy companies, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported.”
Recall that Granholm was that state’s governor.
Another of Granholm’s major accomplishments was vacating the revoked security clearance of communist Robert J. Oppenheimer, a physicist involved in the Manhattan Project and known as the “father of the atomic bomb.”
Said Granholm:
In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission revoked Dr. Oppenheimer’s security clearance through a flawed process that violated the Commission’s own regulations. As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed.
Given that Oppenheimer lied about his communist affiliations, that is doubtful.
No matter. Edison and its subsidiary thought so much of Granholm that they placed her on both boards of directors. The companies’ news release ignored her suspicious dealings while energy secretary. Instead, it focused on her expertise in a field in which she has no related undergraduate or graduate degree.
“Granholm brings extensive experience advancing reliable, resilient, clean energy solutions and deploying zero-carbon technologies from her recent service as U.S. secretary of energy and prior experience as governor of Michigan,” the company wrote of her:
She brings a strong background in cybersecurity and protection of the power grid and electric utilities. Under her leadership, the Department of Energy (DOE) invested heavily in cybersecurity tools and technologies to strengthen the resilience of U.S. energy infrastructure. She has also worked to find a solution for spent nuclear fuel, which could help spur industry growth. During Granholm’s term as DOE secretary, almost 1,000 factories announced they were coming to or expanding in America to make clean energy products, and the DOE invested more than $200 billion in thousands of clean energy projects, creating more than 400,000 U.S. jobs.
Again, Granholm’s academic degrees are not in any known field of science. Nonetheless, Edison hired her — but only after it collected more than half a billion taxpayer dollars.
The appointments come “just six months after Granholm’s Department of Energy awarded $600 million to a consortium of California utilities, including Southern California Edison,” said Just the News.
The state reported that the ill-gotten booty will “upgrade 100 miles of electric transmission lines with grid enhancing technologies to improve reliability and deliver clean, affordable electricity faster.”
Said far-left Governor Gavin Newsom, “Once again, the Biden-Harris Administration is not just talking the talk, they’re walking the walk. This funding is critical to our efforts to build a power grid that ensures all Californians have access to cleaner, cheaper, more reliable electricity.”
As for her benefiting from the $600 million grants, energy analyst David Blackmon told Just the News that that’s “kind of the end game of the crony politics of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, it’s all too common in Washington, D.C.”
A spokesman for Southern California Edison told the website that Granholm’s appointments are “absolutely unrelated” to the free $600 million.
Americans can rest assured that Granholm did not buy her board seats with taxpayer money.