Tag: us department of energy

Rick Perry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here is a look at the life of former US Secretary of Energy and former Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Birth date: March 4, 1950

Birth place: Paint Creek, Texas

Birth name: James Richard Perry

Father: Joseph Ray Perry, a farmer

Mother: Amelia (Holt) Perry

Marriage: Anita (Thigpen) Perry (November 6, 1982-present)

Children: Sydney and Griffin

Education: Texas A&M University, B.S., 1972

Military Service: US Air Force, 1972-1977, Captain

Religion: Methodist

Is an Eagle Scout.

Met his wife, Anita, in elementary school.

Has devoted years to supporting psychedelic-assisted therapies.

Is the longest-serving governor in Texas history.

1972-1977 – Serves in the US Air Force flying transport planes.

1977 – Returns to Texas to live and work on his father’s farm.

1978 – Forms JR Perry Farms with his father.

1985-1991 – Member of the Texas House of Representatives as a Democrat from the 64th District.

1989 – Switches to the Republican Party.

1991-1999 – Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

1999-2000 – Lieutenant Governor of Texas.

December 21, 2000 – Perry is sworn in as governor after George W. Bush resigns to become president of the United States.

November 5, 2002 – Perry is elected to a four-year term.

November 7, 2006 – Is reelected governor.

2008 – Perry’s book “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For” is published.

November 2, 2010 – Perry is elected for a third term in office.

August 13, 2011 – Declares his candidacy for president during a speech in South Carolina.

January 19, 2012 – Suspends his presidential campaign and endorses Newt Gingrich.

July 8, 2013 – Announces that he will not run for reelection as Texas governor in 2014.

August 15, 2014 – A grand jury indicts Perry on charges of coercion of a public servant and abuse of his official capacity. He allegedly threatened to veto funding for a statewide public integrity unit run by Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg unless she resigned following her arrest on a drunk driving charge. She stayed in office, and he later vetoed the funding.

August 19, 2014 – Perry voluntarily appears at the Travis County Court house to be booked and fingerprinted and to have his mug shot taken. He pleads not guilty to charges of coercion of a public servant and abuse of official capacity. The next day he makes the first of six campaign style stops across New Hampshire.

November 18, 2014 – A state district judge in Texas denies a defense motion to have two felony charges dismissed against Perry.

January 15, 2015 – Delivers his farewell address as governor.

June 4, 2015 – Announces he is running for president at a rally in Addison, Texas.

July 24, 2015 – A Texas appeals court dismisses one of two criminal charges against Perry. The court agrees with the argument from Perry’s legal team that a Texas law concerning “coercion of a public servant” violates Perry’s First Amendment freedom of speech rights. The court is allowing a charge related to abuse of power to move forward.

September 11, 2015 – Suspends his campaign for the presidency.

January 25, 2016 – Perry endorses Ted Cruz.

February 24, 2016 – The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals drops charges against Perry alleging he abused his power while in office.

August 30, 2016 – Perry is revealed as one of the members of the upcoming 23rd season of reality television dance competition “Dancing with the Stars” on ABC.

September 27, 2016 – Is eliminated from “Dancing With The Stars.”

November 22, 2016 – Returns to “Dancing With The Stars” for the season finale. Perry dances with Vanilla Ice during a live performance of “Ice Ice Baby.”

December 13, 2016 – President-elect Donald Trump announces he has selected Perry to be his nominee for energy secretary.

January 19, 2017 – Perry says that he regrets recommending the elimination of the Department of Energy during a presidential debate in 2012.

March 2, 2017 – Perry is confirmed as energy secretary with a 62-37 vote in the Senate.

July 26, 2017 – Perry’s office acknowledges that he was the target of a prank call on July 19. During the 20-minute call from Russian pranksters, real names Vladimir Krasnov and Aleksey Stolyarov, respectively, one pretends to be Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman.

February 5, 2019 – Is named the designated survivor for Trump’s second State of the Union address. As the one member of the Cabinet remaining outside the House chamber during the speech in case disaster strikes, Perry will remain in an undisclosed location.

October 10, 2019 – House Democrats issue a subpoena to Perry for documents related to the Trump administration’s contacts with Ukraine as part of the ongoing House impeachment inquiry.

October 17, 2019 – Perry says he plans to resign in a video posted to YouTube.

November 20, 2019 – Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testifies that he, along with special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker and Perry, worked with Giuliani on Ukraine at the “express direction” of Trump and against their better judgment. Sondland also tells lawmakers that he had discussed the investigation in a July 19 email sent to several top US officials, including Perry. In response, the Department of Energy releases a statement denying Sondland’s claims, saying he “misrepresented both Secretary Perry’s interaction with Rudy Giuliani and direction the Secretary received from President Trump.”

December 1, 2019 – Perry resigns as US Secretary of Energy.

January 1, 2020 – Perry is appointed as a director of the general partner that controls Energy Transfer LP, a pipeline company.

February 17, 2021 – In a blog post on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s website, Perry is quoted as saying “partly rhetorically,” that “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Millions of Texans lost power as the state experienced a massive failure brought on by a historic freeze and a power grid that – unlike the other 47 contiguous states – is separated from the rest of the country and is not under federal regulatory oversight, which prevents Texas from being able to borrow power from other states.

December 17, 2021 – January 6 House committee investigators believe that a November 4 text pushing “strategy” to undermine the presidential election came from Perry, three sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN. First presented on the House floor December 14, the text was included in about 6,000 documents turned over to the committee by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Perry denies being the author.

Moments from Rick Perry’s career

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February 21, 2024
US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

The US Department of Energy has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely came from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report.

Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.

The latest assessment further adds to the divide in the US government over whether the Covid-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 as the result of a lab leak or whether it emerged naturally. The various intelligence agencies have been split on the matter for years. In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.

Three other intelligence community elements were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, the report said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the new assessment from the Department of Energy. A senior US intelligence official told the Journal that the update to the intelligence assessment was conducted in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and in consultation with experts outside government.

A Department of Energy spokesperson told CNN in a statement: “The Department of Energy continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

The Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is one of 18 government agencies that make up the intelligence community, which are under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

The latest intelligence assessment was provided to Congress as Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pushing for further investigation into the lab leak theory, while accusing the Biden administration of playing down its possibility.

A spokesperson for House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement that the committee was “reviewing the classified information provided” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a letter requesting information earlier this month.

One of the sources said that the new assessment from the Department of Energy is similar to information from a House Republican Intelligence Committee report released last year on the origins of the virus.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the intelligence community remains divided on the matter, while noting that President Joe Biden has put resources into getting to the bottom of the origin question.

“Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s Dana Bash. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

Sullivan said Biden had directed the national laboratories, which are part of the Department of Energy, to be brought into the assessment.

In May 2020, researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory issued a classified report that found it was possible that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, which came at a time when that line of inquiry was considered taboo.

The US began exploring the possibility that Covid-19 spread in a laboratory as early as April 2020, though the intelligence community has noted repeatedly that a lack of cooperation from Beijing has made it difficult to get to the bottom of the question.

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February 26, 2023

Tag: us department of energy

Rick Perry Fast Facts | CNN Politics

Moments from Rick Perry’s career

US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin | CNN Politics