President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated four men to fill vacant seats on the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors.
The nominations come three months after Trump fired two members of the board, leaving it without a quorum and unable to make major decisions for the nation’s largest federally owned utility, including passing its five-year integrated resource plan in May. TVA manages waterways, oversees public lands and provides electricity for roughly 10 million people in Tennessee and parts of six neighboring states.
The White House’s new nominees include Tennessee auto magnate Lee Beaman, who has donated over $3.6 million to conservative political causes since 2015, according to a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of federal election data. Beaman also denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, signing a letter in December of that year stating: “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner.”
The nominees include two other Tennesseans — Memphis-area utility commissioner and health care CEO Mitch Graves and Knoxville-based litigation attorney Jeff Hagood. Alabama’s Randall Jones, a Nationwide insurance agent, was also nominated.
