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House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. is investigating Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry for his role in the Biden Administration and for his secretive negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party to combat climate change. Kerry’s cabinet-level role of “climate envoy” was created by President Joe Biden soon after his 2021 inauguration, and although the position doesn’t require Senate approval, the SPEC office has an estimated $13.9 million budget and approval for a staff of 45.
Comer wants to know what exactly they’re doing, writing to Kerry in a letter Thursday:
To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests. Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy.
The Committee requests documents and information to understand your role and provide necessary transparency over the SPEC and its activities. As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests. Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars. [Emphasis mine.]
Here is the letter:
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is demanding Biden’s “climate envoy” John Kerry hand over documents related to his secret negotiations with the Chinese Communist Party on “deals that undermine the United States’ interests.” Good letter here: pic.twitter.com/1tBMb2LEAz
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) February 2, 2023
Republicans have long been concerned that the SPEC has not been transparent about its activities. Comer writes:
We are left with an insufficient understanding of your office’s activities, spending, and staffing. To enable long overdue oversight of your office, please provide the following documents and information.
He then lists the committee’s requests, which include budgets for fiscal years 2021, 2022, and 2023, a full list of employees and their salaries, all correspondence with environmental groups, and all documents containing information about international travel by the Kerry and SPEC employees.
Comer is especially concerned, however, by Kerry’s interactions with China and his willingness to ignore human rights issues:
You have also continued to downplay the CCP’s human rights violations and its antagonism against the U.S. while promoting climate negotiations that the CCP does not even appear interested in entering. In April 2021, you insisted that CCP’s intransigence “on human rights, geostrategic interests… do not have to get in the way of something that is critical as dealing with the climate.”
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China chairing a meeting with John Kerry on climate change is like joining a human rights Commision with Iran as a member. Ludicrous. And the Biden administration is doing both.
— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 22, 2021
The famously tone-deaf, holier-than-thou Kerry has struck a “who cares?” tone on the issue before:
“Well we’re honest about the differences,” Kerry said in 2021 when asked about human rights abuses connected to China’s green energy supply chain. “We certainly know what they are, and we’ve articulated them, but that’s not my lane here … My job is to be the climate guy and stay focused on trying to move the climate agenda forward.” [Emphasis mine.]
Kerry has been flying around the globe in private jets since he took on the envoy mantle, meeting twice in China with CCP officials for private talks and attending climate summits and the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. As my colleague Mike Miller reported, Kerry was especially narcissistic in his recent Davos appearance, seeming to claim he was some sort of super being:
When you start to think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we — [a] select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives — are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.
It remains to be seen whether Kerry will continue to stonewall House Republicans or whether the SPEC will actually hand over some of the documents. It’s high time, though, that the special envoy received some actual oversight.
This is John Kerry. John is very concerned about climate change. He flies in his private jet to conferences all over the world to express concern over climate change, and ask you to stop driving cars. pic.twitter.com/OPfPzMa9Cv
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) February 2, 2023
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