When Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her staff of clowns bungled a four-day ramble in 2023 to show off the wonder of electric vehicles, the lasting impression would be the report of her advance team blocking an open charger so she wouldn’t have to wait for one. A federal report, however, reveals details that cast the entire charade in an even worse light.

The Granholm tour was to take her from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., and was intended to justify the billions of taxpayers’ dollars the Biden administration was pouring into green energy initiatives. The message was lost when it was learned, two months after the incident, that “an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle” by a charger “to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary,” according to National Public Radio reporter Camila Domonoske, who was along for the ride.

Granholm’s “caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150, and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Ga.,” said Domonoske. But “one of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied.”

It wouldn’t look good for the troupe to have to wait for a charge. After all, the entire purpose of the junket was to show the public that EVs are the way to travel. The optics became worse, though, when Granholm’s team “boxed out — on a sweltering day” a family “with a baby in the vehicle” using a car with an internal-combustion engine, Domonoske reported. 

Upset by the outrageous manners and ugly display of entitlement by federal functionaries, the family called the police. Turns out Georgia had no law prohibiting non-EVs from parking in charging spaces.

But that staffer did not commit the only misdeed by a federal employee on the rolling celebration. The Energy Department inspector general found that the government workers who supported Granholm were not “conscientious stewards of taxpayer funds,” and further noted that “conscientious stewardship is particularly crucial for matters involving high publicity.” Such as a public relations campaign to push a politically preferred mode of transportation.

In the special report issued earlier this month, the Energy Department Office of the Inspector General determined that within Granholm’s troupe:

36 of the 42 travel vouchers (86 percent) contained lodging expenses that exceeded Government per diem rates. Additionally, we identified seven travel vouchers for which travel expenses exceeded 15 percent of the authorized cost. Further, we found four travel vouchers for which government-issued travel cards were not used for expenses, as required. Moreover, travel voucher warnings addressing potential policy deviations and issues were unaddressed or inadequately justified.

Seems there was more at work than just “a series of events and townhalls highlighting the Biden-Harris administration’s new and existing efforts to build a clean energy economy, create clean energy jobs, and cut costs for all Americans.”

It was, apparently, a pleasure cruise for some staffers.

“The total cost of the 42 travel vouchers was $124,823.94. The total amount by which lodging expenses exceeded per diem rates was $9,487.50, with excess costs per traveler ranging from $50 to $634 per trip,” says the IG report.

“Travelers could have chosen different nearby hotels to reduce travel costs at the government’s expense; however, department officials mentioned difficulties finding hotels with functioning EV chargers onsite or nearby.” The former is indicative of the entitlement mentality among Washington bureaucrats, while the latter underscores the perils of EV travel that activists and politicians want to cover up.

Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding. Maybe the employees were not properly advised on federal travel rules. But our combined decades of observations indicate that government, at all levels, tends to draw people who couldn’t be more unsuited for the jobs they have.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board