Surprise! Biden's Chief of Staff is Profiting Off of Biden's "Environmental" Policies

The endless grift. The endless predation of the DC Connected Class on the citizens of the United States.

As the Biden administration pursues its strategy of building resilient supply chains for the surging clean energy industry, one metals company has seen a substantial boost. Last month, TechMet, which is part-owned by the U.S. government, announced that it had closed a $200 million fundraising round. Celebrating more than $180 million invested in projects around the world over the last year, At the G20 summit last November, President Joe Biden touted a TechMet project in Brazil to mine nickel and cobalt for electric vehicle batteries. And during her trip across Africa earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a U.S.-brokered agreement between TechMet and another company, Lifezone Metals, to mine one of the largest nickel deposits in the world: Tanzania's Kabanga mine.

Yet White House chief of staff Jeffrey Zients, whose job involves implementing the administration's policy, has sidelined himself from the U.S. government's deepening involvement with TechMet -- thanks to what could be perceived as a conflict of interest stemming from his family's vast wealth.

TechMet's CEO is Brian Menell, a South African mining baron and the brother of Zients's wife, Mary Menell Zients. Jeffrey Zients disclosed the relationship when he was brought on as chief of staff, the White House said, and recused himself from all matters related to the company. His recusal, which has not been previously reported, was the appropriate move, as ethics experts agree, but it also means the U.S. is operating without its chief quarterback in its dealings with a major player in the green energy transition.

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U.S. backing for TechMet dates back to 2020, when the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation put $25 million in the company under President Donald Trump. Last year, the DFC approved another $30 million of investments in the company's clean energy projects. The Biden administration went on to facilitate a partnership between TechMet and Lifezone in Tanzania, which Harris promoted in March, as part of the Biden administration's $560 million of support for the East African country. Thanks to U.S. diplomatic and financial coordination, the Tanzanian government partnered with Lifezone to extract nickel from the Kabanga mine in the northwestern part of the country and deliver it to the U.S. and international markets by 2026.

Zients's relatives, it turns out, had a stake in both sides of the U.S.-brokered agreement around the mine. The Zients Children's Trust, which was set up for the benefit of Jeffrey Zients's adult children, owned more than 400,000 shares of Lifezone before it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July. The company had a successful first day of trading, seeing its shares jump nearly 50 percent. (Zients is not required to disclose the holdings of his adult children. Sharma said that he is not involved with the trust. "He does not have a position with, receive income from, or have a financial interest in the Trust," she wrote.)

Even as the clean energy revolution marks a much-needed break from the era of fossil fuels, the potential for the family of the chief of staff to profit from the deal around the Kabanga mine illustrates that when it comes to resource extraction from the periphery flowing to the benefit of elites in the center, structurally, much will remain the same.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:10 PM

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