The Department of Energy asked Vanity Fair to correct what the agency believes is a factual error in a report the outlet published suggesting White House officials sought to oust an agency employee they believed was an Obama-era appointee.
Acting Inspector General at the DOE April Stephenson was not asked to resign from her post, the agency wrote in a statement Friday responding to the report, which also implies the Trump administration refused to accept internal knowledge Obama-era officials gathered to help Trump prepare for the presidency.
“The current Acting Inspector General is the Principal Deputy Inspector General, a career position. She will remain in an acting capacity for as long as requested to do so by the Administration,” the statement reads. DOE officials have also asked the report’s author, Michael Lewis, to correct the error.
Lewis claims that the elements within the DOE refused help from Obama administration officials. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, for instance, spent “minutes, not hours” speaking with former secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, about the agency’s responsibilities, according to the report.
Trump believes that former Obama officials inside his administration are purposely trying to torpedo his agenda.
One recent example appears to show that elements within the Department of the Treasury attempted to use ExxonMobil to brush back Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Sanctions experts suggested earlier this month that the Treasury Department acted strangely when the agency issued a $2 million fine against Exxon for forging a deal in 2014 with Russian oil giant Rosneft.
The Treasury Department’s decision points out that Exxon’s “senior-most executives” were involved in violations is almost certainly a dig at Tillerson, who led the company at the time of the alleged transgression, sanctions analysts noted.
Vanity Fair did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment in time for the publication of this article.
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