Fifteen groups have now united and are calling for a Biden cabinet official to resign over serious ethics complaints.
The group of nonprofits, who say they are committed to promoting ethics and integrity in government, say that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has “disregarded and de-prioritized her ethics obligations at every turn.”
“We request the immediate resignation of Secretary Jennifer Granholm based not only on her actions – her repeated apparent violations of federal ethics laws and regulations – but also on the ethics failures and legal missteps of her subordinates resulting from her poor example,” the group wrote in their letter to President Biden.
An example of their concerns occurred in 2021 when her ties to Proterra were discovered.
The Biden administration promoted Proterra – an electric bus company -and at the same time, Granholm still held stock options because she was a previous board member. Just before a deadline set by an ethics probe, she sold her stock for $1.6 million.
Granholm could also defer paying capital gains taxes on the sale because cabinet members must sell their stock to take their positions.
Granholm has also admitted to paying late fees for failing to disclose stock sales in 2021.
“The planet is warming faster than ever, the cost and impact of extreme weather events are intensifying, and yet what some people are spending their time on is a $400 late fee that was already paid on a clerical oversight,” Energy Department spokeswoman Charisma Troiano said.
In May 2023, Granholm admitted that her husband owned shares of Ford Motor Company which she never disclosed but claimed that when she became aware of them they were sold in May.
Before the sale of Ford stock Granholm was part of a video propping up the company’s electric vehicles.
“It’s one of two things at this point. She’s either incompetent or lying,” said Representative Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Proterra also recently filed for bankruptcy.
