Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates held a top-tier "Q" security clearance at the Department of Energy from 2014 to 2021 - though the DOE didn't grant it. Another federal agency vetted him first, and the letter confirming the clearance doesn't say which one.
The detail comes from a DOE letter entered into the Congressional record by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). The letter emerged as Fauci faced fierce Republican blowback during his Senate hearing last week, where the longtime face of COVID policy pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times.
A "Q" clearance is the Energy Department's highest classification level, the kind normally reserved for people working on nuclear weapons design, national labs, critical energy infrastructure, and highly classified scientific research. Gates kept that clearance for seven years, starting under President Obama and running through the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One explanation as to why; Gates founded and chairs TerraPower, the advanced nuclear reactor company that has spent years working alongside DOE national laboratories and won Nuclear Regulatory Commission construction approval in March. A nuclear executive holding a nuclear clearance is not, on its own, a scandal.
But the letter doesn't mention TerraPower -
