Who is the current chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission? At this moment, there is no clear answer.
If you thought the Trump White House on Nov. 5 had demoted Neil Chatterjee from chairman to a lowly commissioner and elevated James Danly from a lowly commissioner to chairman, you might be right. Or wrong.
In a long takeout Nov. 13 the Washington Post reported on the flailing death of the Trump administration and an analysis of the 30-year-old former Trump go-fur Johnny McEntee, now the presidential personnel director. The article ended with the saga of the Chatterjee demotion.
The Post reported an interview with Chatterjee, a protégé of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The White House didn’t make a public statement when it informed Chatterjee that he was no longer FERC chairman. He told the Post that it appears the White House did not file the proper paperwork for the demotion. He added that he didn’t know he was fired as chairman until he got a phone call from Danly.
“Here’s the crazy thing: I don’t actually know that I’ve been demoted,” Chatterjee said. It seems that the president must sign a legal document designating a new FERC chair, which has not yet appeared. Instead, McEntee’s office sent FERC’s administrative management “a one-sentence email” on the replacement.
“We still have no record evidence that the designation was signed. But what’s stranger is there’s been no public announcement from the White House,” Chatterjee said in the interview. “No one from the White House has actually spoken to me about this. So I can only speculate as to why I was demoted.”
The Washington Examiner newspaper later quoted a White House personnel office flunky, “We were trying to do Chatterjee a favor by not embarrassing him publicly with an announcement,” The staffer said he’d “rather not” explain why Chatterjee got ousted.
Tomorrow’s FERC monthly meeting may reveal an answer to the leadership question, but it may not. In the meantime, Chairman-designee Danly says he will depart from long-standing commission practice, not briefing reporters after meetings or “any meetings with the media,” because he says that’s incompatible with his role as an adjudicator.
In any case, Danly’s tenure as FERC chairman is likely to be short. An incoming Biden administration is likely to demote him (presumably with the proper paperwork) back to being a lowly commissioner. Lone FERC Democrat Rich Glick is likely to be the new chairman.
And Chatterjee told The Hill newspaper, “I don’t give a fuck what people think of me.”
— Kennedy Maize