Rick Perry came to Washington looking for a deal, and less than two months into his tenure as Energy Secretary, he found a hot prospect. It was April 19, 2017, and Perry, the former Texas governor, failed presidential candidate and contestant on Dancing With the Stars, was sitting in his office on Independence Avenue with two influential Ukrainians. “He said, ‘Look, I’m a new guy, I’m a dealmaker, I’m a Texan,’” recalls one of them, Yuriy Vitrenko, then Ukraine’s chief energy negotiator. “We’re ready to do deals,” he remembers Perry saying.
Time: As Energy Secretary, Rick Perry mixed money and politics in Ukraine
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry speaks during a National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) conference November 5, 2019 in Washington, DC. The commission held a conference on "Strength Through Innovation: The Future of A.I. and U.S. National Security."
