Kelly Armstrong

Et tu, Nancy Mace? The iconoclastic congresswoman from South Carolina put one of eight nails in Kevin McCarthy’s speakership — prompting a series of cascading events beyond any one person’s control and total uncertainty in the continuity of America’s government. Mace, first elected to Congress with support to the tune of over $4 million from McCarthy’s Congressional Leadership Fund, undertook quite a heel-turn from January, where she labeled her partner-in-chaos Matt Gaetz a “fraud” to today, when she teamed up with Gaetz and every single House Democrat to jettison McCarthy, leaving the country in uncharted waters and the House without a speaker.

The Department of Energy was besieged with ethics complaints this week as energy secretary Jennifer Granholm stares down accusations of corruption and demands from Congress that she fire Christopher Smith, a top aide and former Ford lobbyist. Senator John Barrasso, one of the most powerful Senate Republicans, faulted Granholm for “repeated lapses in upholding basic ethical standards” and demanded she “remove Ford’s lobbyist from [her] advisory board,” while laying out how Ford has basically taken over the Energy Department. “Just over two months after Ford’s top lobbyist was appointed to the [Secretary of Energy Advisory Board], the department announced a $9.

Anthony Fauci’s final months in office, in which he opposed a federal judge striking down a federal travel mask mandate and unilaterally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a scandal-plagued NGO, were most likely illegal, according to findings from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee claims that his term was never legally renewed. According to the findings, the Department of Health and Human Services “repeatedly misled” Congress and tried to cover its tracks in order to dismiss allegations that Fauci and his allies were unlawfully working for months, during which they handed out tens of billions of dollars of government contracts, many of which are now in legal jeopardy.

Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm has admitted to misleading Congress, in an apparent violation of the US Code that can carry a sentence of up to five years to prison. In a Friday news dump filled just hours after the news of former president Donald Trump’s indictment, Granholm confessed to making a false statement before the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee on April 20.  At issue is Granholm telling Senator Josh Hawley that she owns no individual stocks, “whereas I should have said that I did not own any conflicting stocks,” she wrote in a letter shared with E&E News.