When Rep. Mark Green announced his retirement from Congress on Monday, citing a mysterious job opportunity he couldn’t pass up, most members were surprised and confused. Green is already a very wealthy man, according to his personal financial disclosures, and he is extremely powerful as the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
But not everybody was so surprised.
During his time in Congress, Green has been pitching people on a foreign business opportunity in South America, five sources told NOTUS.
Specifically, Green has mentioned a potential investment in Guyana, a country on the north Atlantic coast of South America that is currently experiencing a massive oil boom.
He has also made at least one trip to the country. On Monday, when he announced his resignation, Green was in Guyana, three sources told NOTUS, causing him to miss votes. He remains in Guyana, these sources said, also missing votes on Tuesday.
The sources told NOTUS that Green was “cagey” about the opportunity — “super cagey,” according to one of the sources — never disclosing specifically what the business was and how he’s connected to the venture. He simply pitched the idea as a way to make money, two sources told NOTUS.
Additionally, Green has used his powerful congressional connections to try to land meetings with potential investors, according to these sources.
On at least two occasions, according to a source briefed on the situations, lobbyists who were visiting Green for what they believed were legislative meetings were surprised to find themselves on the other end of the conversation. It was Green who had something to sell them: a mysterious business opportunity.
This source told NOTUS that both lobbyists found the situation strange and left without pursuing the opportunity.
In response to a number of questions about his new job and his activities seeking investments while he remains in Congress, Green told NOTUS in a statement that he had “never solicited a lobbyist or executive to purchase a company I own, or am planning to own, or am planning to work for.”
“I have completed the required House Ethics forms for all companies that I have started or negotiated with for board memberships, and post-employment work,” Green said.
He did not clarify what exactly that post-employment work would be, and he did not deny seeking investments from lobbyists.
A spokesperson for the House Ethics Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
Green has been notably guarded about why exactly he plans to leave Congress once reconciliation is finished. In his press release announcing his intention to resign, Green simply said he was recently “offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up.”
He hasn’t been much more forthcoming with even the people he’s seeking investment from.
During one meeting with a lobbyist and an executive, Green asked if this person’s company was open to purchasing another company, one source told NOTUS. However, there was no commitment to buy the company, and the two didn’t get much more information.
Given that he is currently serving as a lawmaker while pursuing this business venture and not publicly revealing where he is going to work, lawmakers and ethics experts have concerns.
“When you get elected to this job and you take an oath of office, you have only one concern: the best interest of the country,” Rep. David Joyce told NOTUS. “So you can’t really have divided loyalties when it comes to doing this job correctly.”
Another GOP member had a more blunt response when asked about Green taking the job and remaining in office: “What the fuck?”
“How do you line up a job before you resign?” this member continued. “Elise couldn’t leave to go to the United Nations because our margins were so small, but he can go into the private sector?”
With Green saying he plans to stay through the conclusion of the reconciliation bill, members and ethics experts have been left even more confused and worried about potential conflicts of interest.
Kedric Payne — the Campaign Legal Center’s vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics — told NOTUS that it is “extremely strange for a member to have a job lined up in the private sector that they have announced and then continue to say they’re going to vote on a bill that is not necessarily imminent.”
“You want your member of Congress to prioritize the public interest, and if they seem distracted by a future job, it brings the question whether or not they are prioritizing their constituents,” Payne said.
Some of Green’s fellow Republican lawmakers agreed, with a third GOP member telling NOTUS that if Green is going to remain in office, his “colleagues and society deserves to understand if there might be some outside issues affecting their vote.”
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.