Former energy secretary Rick Perry said his Democratic successor, Jennifer Granholm, should face congressional investigations over the $200 million her department sent to a China-based battery company, predicting that those investigations would lead to calls for her resignation.
Perry’s comments come as U.S. Senate and House investigators have launched inquiries into the DOE grant to Microvast Holdings to build a battery separator facility in Tennessee, using federal funds that were intended to counter China’s dominance over the global lithium-ion battery supply chain. Microvast, a U.S. holding company, operates primarily from China and is under scrutiny from American financial regulators, the Washington Free Beacon first reported last week.
"This is just unacceptable behavior for the Department of Energy, the secretary of energy to be sending money to companies like this," said Perry, who served as secretary of energy under the Trump administration until 2019, during an interview with Fox News Sunday Morning Futures. "You’re gonna have the House investigating this. You’re gonna have the Senate investigating this."
