Former climate envoy John Kerry was among the 19 just bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as a watchdog group called him out for his serial secrecy.
The pro-energy advocacy group Power The Future accuses Kerry of “hiding the truth” about who worked for him in the Climate office he just left. He’s now assigned to President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
The group said a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the identities of Kerry’s Climate staff was rejected, the same rejection the Herald recently received.
“John Kerry may be gone, but the practice of hiding the truth remains,” Daniel Turner, Founder and Executive Director for Power The Future.
“It’s clear the Biden Administration doesn’t want anyone to know who is wielding the real power in his administration so the only remaining question is why. It makes us wonder if the reason behind the secrecy is because this office serves a revolving door between official government offices and well-connected campaign donor interests and they don’t want the public to know before the election,” Turner told the Herald.
“There is simply no reason to keep these names a secret,” he added, “yet Joe Biden and John Podesta are hell-bent on continuing to do so.”
Podesta has replaced Kerry at the Climate office.
Kerry informed the Herald last month in a “final” response to a records request submitted in July of 2022, that the full identity of his office staff will never be released.
“This action closes your request in this office,” he declared via the State Department’s Statutory and Compliance Division.
The only update to the FOIA is the addition of six names of office employees out of 27, and those came after the Herald pointed out two of them were already on Kerry’s climate website.
Turner, however, said the number of payroll employees “ranged from 27 to the mid-30s – yet 45 have been cited in the org chart.”
The annual payroll of $4.3 million remains the same, as previously reported.
The Herald is appealing the “final” denial.
