Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Has Financial Stake in Company Joe Biden Visited Virtually

White House Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm owns up to $5 million in vested stock options in Proterra as the White House has had back-to-back events linked to the green energy company, according to reporting from the Washington Free Beacon.  

On April 19th, Kamala Harris visited Thomas Built Buses in North Carolina, which counts Proterra as its main supplier of electric vehicles. On April 20th, Joe Biden participated in a virtual tour of the Proterra manufacturing facility in South Carolina. It’s the same company that as of earlier this year had Granholm on its board of directors and that she still holds a significant financial stake.

Free Beacon: “The back-to-back White House visits to Granholm-connected companies risk at least the appearance of impropriety and demonstrate how lawmakers can use policy initiatives to pad their own wallets. Biden’s infrastructure package includes a $174 billion investment in the electric vehicle market, calls for the replacement of ‘50,000 diesel transit vehicles’ in favor of electric alternatives, and creates a Clean Buses for Kids program that will ‘electrify at least 20 percent of our yellow school bus fleet.’”

Granholm has taken a leading role in the administration’s clean energy and infrastructure initiatives, which Democrats have aimed to spend multiple trillions of dollars on.

Free Beacon: “The president in February tasked her with ‘identifying risks in the supply chain for high-capacity batteries, including electric-vehicle batteries, and policy recommendations to address these risks.’”

The White House confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that Granholm still owns the investment. 

Bottom Line: The back-to-back visits to companies with close connections to Secretary Granholm raises suspicions that the Biden Administration will repeat the faults of the 2009 stimulus by rewarding well-connected green energy companies. The administration doesn’t hold the benefit of the doubt after rewarding a massive no-bid contract to a non-profit that recently hired a former Biden-Harris Transition official.