Josh Hawley presses Biden energy secretary over false testimony about stock purchases

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EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is probing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in response to her quiet admission last week that she misled him about her stock ownership.

In a letter Tuesday morning, Hawley criticized Granholm for her misleading comments made in response to his questions during a Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee hearing on April 20 and added she owed an "immediate and complete explanation." Granholm sent a letter to committee leadership Friday afternoon, acknowledging that she owned individual stocks despite testifying to the contrary.

"No, I’m invested in mutual funds," Granholm testified in April when Hawley asked whether she owned individual stocks. "I’m not owning individual stocks."

She also told Hawley during the exchange that she "would not object" to legislation he has authored banning federal officials and lawmakers from trading stocks.

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Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm told Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., under oath in April that she didn't own any individual stocks. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

However, in her letter Friday, Granholm said she actually maintained shares of six companies at the time of her testimony. On May 18, shortly after discovering that she still owned the shares, the energy secretary said she divested from the six companies. Granholm didn't say in the letter which companies she had owned shares of, but vowed to share that information in an upcoming disclosure.

In addition, Granholm said she discovered on May 13 that her husband Daniel Mulhern owned $2,457.89 worth of shares in Ford Motor Company. Those shares were then sold on May 15, a Monday, when the stock market opened. She also failed to disclose those shares in her two prior annual disclosures and had mistakenly believed her family's divestiture of Ford was complete in early 2021.

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"Three times you told me, and this committee, that you did not own individual stocks," Hawley wrote to Granholm in his letter Tuesday. "But we now know that was false. Last Friday, you informed the committee that you did own stocks at the time of your testimony on April 20, 2023. In fact, you still held stocks in six companies."

"You then divested from these holdings on May 18, 2023," he continued. "But you chose not to notify the committee until last Friday—over seven weeks after the hearing and at least three weeks after you sold these stocks. So I want to know: why?"

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm testifies during a congressional hearing. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

He also noted a Business Insider report from January 2022 that Granholm improperly disclosed her stock sales in violation of conflict-of-interest laws.

Hawley then asked Granholm a series of questions including why she didn't immediately notify the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee when she discovered the disclosure error and why she took four weeks to sell her shares in the six unnamed companies.

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The Missouri Republican demanded she provide him with the answers by June 20. He also requested Granholm provide the committee with a complete list of her stock transactions over the past 10 years "for an evaluation of any additional conflicts of interest."

"Secretary Granholm always puts the interests of the American people first," David Mayorga, the director of public affairs at the Department of Energy, told Fox News Digital in a statement Tuesday. 

"As part of her commitment to the highest ethical conduct and transparency, Secretary Granholm timely divested of all conflicting assets that were known at the time of her confirmation, and subsequently even divested of assets she wasn’t legally required to sell," Mayorga continued. "The Secretary is focused on delivering an equitable clean energy future that will bring cheaper power, cleaner air and more good-paying jobs for more Americans."