Questions for Perry
Energy secretary’s plausible reasons behind Ukrainian connections merit more scrutiny.
For our old friend Rick Perry — remember him? — it was going to be so very simple. As close acquaintances told reporters recently, the plan was to make it through November as Donald Trump’s energy secretary and then head home to Round Top, where he and wife Anita built a home shortly before the former Texas governor answered the president’s call. In the Fayette County village that time forgot and Houstonians and Austinites have discovered, Perry’s biggest decision might have been whether to order the strawberry-rhubarb or the apple pie at Royer’s, the rustic, little cafe on the town square.
Alas, leave-taking is rarely simple for anyone brave enough — foolhardy enough? — to venture into the Trump lair. Shortly before it was time for Perry to start taking down and packing up gripand-grin photos from his office wall, a president facing the very real possibility of impeachment in the ever-spreading Ukraine scandal snatched a new scapegoat out of the air: Rick Perry. Trump maintained that Perry kept hounding him about talking to newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, even though he didn’t want to make the call. However reluctant he might have been, Trump called Zelenskiy on July 25, alluded to a little favor and got himself into a Trumpian heap of trouble. Perry’s fault. Obviously.
For most of his tenure at the U.S. Department of Energy, the old Air Force pilot has managed to fly below the radar, thus avoiding the incessant flack directed at the Trump presidency. Although Perry has managed to avoid both scandal and Trumpian ineptitude at the “oops” agency he famously forgot in one televised debate, we now learn, thanks to Trump, that he has extensive Ukrainian connections of his own. The man who made a cringe-worthy appearance on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2016 has visited Kiev so often that he just might perform a mean Hopak, the national dance of Ukraine.
Perry has a plausible explanation for his Ukraine visits. As energy secretary, he was trying to sell American natural gas to a beleaguered country dangerously dependent on Russia for its energy supplies. “They’ve been held hostage by Russians, by Russian gas,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
He also helped arrange a deal to export U.S. coal to Ukraine. And, yes, he did urge Trump to call the Ukrainian president — but to talk about energy, not Joe Biden. “Not once, as God as my witness, not once was a Biden name — not the former vice president, not his son — ever mentioned,” he told CBN.
There’s no reason to doubt him on the Biden issue, but another Ukrainian wrinkle is more worrisome. It seems that Perry has been a member of the selfstyled “three amigos,” a trio of Trump administration officials who have been pushing for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company to expand its board to include Americans. It so happens that the names Perry floated were two longtime energy executives from Houston — Robert Bensh of Pelicourt LLC and Michael Bleyzer, head of a private equity firm. Both have made large donations to the Republican Party.
Perry’s role in all this is a reminder to his fellow Texans that he was no stranger to hard-nosed transactional governance during his long years in Austin, as both legislator and the state’s longest-serving governor. Whatever his motives now, it must be hard for a troubled nation trying to hold off Russia not to feel besieged, as well, by its presumptive ally. With friends like Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and perhaps Perry and his “amigos,” who needs enemies?
That scrumptious pie at Royer’s in Round Top? Perry will probably have to have it shipped. He’s now saying he has no plans to leave his post next month. Regardless of when he leaves, he has some explaining to do. He has said that he will cooperate fully with Congress. Now is his chance. House Democrats subpoenaed him Thursday for documents related to the Ukrainian energy company as well as his involvement in Trump’s call with Zelenskiy.
As he lawyers up for the coming ordeal, we urge him to tell the truth, not only about his Ukraine dealings but also about the president he continues to serve. The American people deserve that information.
Contemplating the coming days, he might even commune with a former governor who just a few years ago labeled Trumpism “a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”
That caustic labeler, of course, would be the pride of Paint Creek, one James Richard Perry.