The Senate on Monday confirmed Dan Brouillette as the next U.S. energy secretary. Brouillette succeeds Rick Perry, who leaves the job as questions swirl in the impeachment inquiry about whether his dealings with Ukraine.

Brouillette, 57, has served as the Energy Department's deputy secretary since 2017, and he previously worked for the department under the administration of former President George W. Bush. In between those administrations, he was an executive at the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) and the Ford Motor Company. He is also a longtime Republican donor.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country’s new president.

Among the key figures embroiled in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump is Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who announced last week that he will be resigning later this year.

It was Perry who led the U.S. delegation to Ukraine when newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was inaugurated back in May. And it was Perry who urged Trump to make that now-infamous July phone call to Zelenskiy — a phone call that's at the heart of the inquiry.

Rick Perry, the energy secretary who has drawn scrutiny for his role in the controversy surrounding President Trump’s efforts to push Ukraine officials to investigate the son of a political rival, on Thursday told the president he would resign from the cabinet.

The Perry resignation had been anticipated for several weeks, even before the news emerged of his involvement in efforts to pressure the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate a company that had worked with Hunter Biden, the younger son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

President Trump told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make.

Behind the scenes: Trump made these comments during a conference call with House members on Friday, according to 3 sources on the call.

Per the sources, Trump rattled off the same things he has been saying publicly — that his call with Zelensky was "perfect"and he did nothing wrong.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry suggested Thursday that expanding the use of fossil fuels could help prevent sexual assault.

It's almost the perfect tweet for press coverage of the Trump administration. A Trump administration official makes a claim, poorly articulated, and a reporter wryly and snarkily reduces that argument to a stupid and overly simplistic format. The Hill — maybe the worst offender in this regard -- tweets out that reductive and misleading formulation, and it goes viral.

This is not the Onion.

The New York Times clearly reported in Thursday's newspaper that Rick Perry, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Energy Department, “initially misunderstood” the role. It just wasn't clear where that reporting came from. No one quoted in the story said exactly that. And there was no mention of unnamed transition team sources.

If you had read The New York Times Wednesday night, you would be terrified to learn that the man nominated to be our next energy secretary had no clue what his job will entail. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the editors claimed, apparently did not know his job would include a safeguarding of America's nuclear arsenal. Instead, he was under the impression he'd be acting as a sort of ambassador on behalf of the oil and gas industry. The editors quote an energy lobbyist who was hired to the Trump team to try and prove their point.