Face of Nation : US Energy Secretary Rick Perry is reportedly expected to announce his resignation in November, sources told Politico. But a spokeswoman for the Energy Department said Perry remains a ‘proud member’ of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, in a statement that stopped short of denying Politico’s report.
‘While the beltway media has breathlessly reported on rumors of Secretary Perry’s departure for months, he is still the Secretary of Energy and a proud member of President Trump’s Cabinet,’ spokeswoman Shaylyn Haynes said in a statement. ‘One day the media will be right. Today is not that day.’
Sources told Politico that while Perry’s contacts with Ukraine have drawn him into the impeachment inquiry into Trump by House of Representatives Democrats, his expected departure was not related to the Ukraine controversy.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation last week after a whistleblower lodged a complaint about Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into investigating former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The complaint mentioned Perry, who led a small US delegation to Zelensky’s inauguration in May, replacing Vice President Mike Pence who had been scheduled to go. Perry has been free of ethics investigations that have weighed on other Trump officials, forcing a number of them, such as former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt, to leave the Republican administration.
The longest serving governor of oil-producing Texas, Perry has been one of the top officials working to advance Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda on maximizing production of fossil fuels. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, who has attended many international energy meetings in recent months, is widely expected by energy experts in Washington to replace Perry.
It was also reported on Thursday that the president is now calling on China to probe Biden despite Trump already being ensnarled in an impeachment investigation over his request for Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter. Trump and Pence say Americans have a right to know about the wrongdoing the president alleges.
Pence has defended Trump’s call that foreign governments investigate Biden. And Pence is echoing Trump´s private and public urging of Ukraine’s president to investigate former the Biden family. Pence told reporters at an event in Arizona that he thinks ‘the American people have a right to know if the vice president of the United States or his family profited from his position as vice president during the last administration’.
Trump has sought, without evidence, to implicate Biden and his son Hunter in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Hunter served on the board of Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. However, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Bidens.
Biden’s campaign chairman says Trump’s assertions merely show he’s afraid of facing Biden in next year’s election. On Wednesday, hours after Trump described Biden and his son as being ‘stone-cold crooked’, Biden told an audience in Reno, Nevada, that the Republican president is ‘not going to destroy me’.
‘Let me make something clear to Trump and his hatchet men and the special interests funding his attacks against me,’ Biden said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You’re not going to destroy me. And you’re not going to destroy my family.
‘I don’t care how much money you spend or how dirty the attacks get,’ said Biden, who leads in most opinion polls among the 19 Democrats seeking their party’s nomination to face Trump in next year’s election.
