In a tense exchange that seemed to scramble partisan lines, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) lit into Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm over the staff at her agency trading stocks in companies flagged by ethics officers ― including oil giants.
It was a brief moment of political theater near the end of a two-hour hearing on the Energy Department’s annual budget, an attempt by the right-wing lawmaker to burnish his bona fides as a populist and call out apparent Democratic hypocrisy about fossil fuels.
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But the back-and-forth highlighted yet another gap in federal ethics rules at a time when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ dealings with a billionaire donor are stoking fresh debate over how to police corruption, and it showed how Republicans turn progressives’ tactics against Democrats.
From 2017 to 2021, more than 130 staffers collectively reported trades of shares, bonds and options in firms that Energy Department ethics officers flagged as related to their agency work, a former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for doing so. “Let’s ban it for all executive department officials. Let’s ban it for all members of Congress. How about that?”
Concluding a hearing that spanned everything from funding for nuclear waste storage to hydrogen fuel subsidies to how Republicans’ willingness to drive the federal government into default could harm the U.S. atomic arsenal, Granholm replied: “I would not object to that.”
