Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., is probing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm over the role Ford Motor Company’s top lobbyist played in securing a record-setting Department of Energy (DOE) loan for the automaker.
Barrasso — the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee — sent a letter Wednesday to Granholm with a series of questions about the apparent conflict of interest. In April, Granholm appointed Chris Smith, Ford’s top lobbyist and chief government affairs officer, to her executive advisory board, months before her agency announced a behemoth loan for Ford electric vehicle manufacturing plants in June.
“The totality of these circumstances amounts to, at the very least, the appearance of an undue influence by Ford on the Department of Energy,” Barrasso wrote in the letter. “The Department must be guided by a spirit of impartiality and competition as it allocates hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.”
“It is clear this cannot happen while…