Swamp Things: More Than 50% of President Trump’s Nominees Have Ties to the Industries They’re Supposed to Regulate

The following article by Lachlan Markay and Sam Stein was posted on the Daily Beast website October 29, 2017:

The president has turned federal agencies over to the very CEOs, lobbyists, and lawyers whom they are supposed to regulate.

In August 2016, energy consultant Steven Gardner gave a presentation to the trade group Professional Engineers in Mining (PDF). In it, he hammered the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement for what he said was a highly flawed regulatory process behind the office’s Stream Protection Rule, a regulation designed to prevent water pollution near coal production sites. Gardner’s firm, ECSI LLC, had been retained by a coal industry trade group “to conduct a comprehensive critical review of the proposed rule,” which it opposed.

Gardner ended his August 2016 presentation with a slide asking, “What’s next?” that featured a photo of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Contrary to the slide’s projection, Donald Trump prevailed and ended up signing legislation rolling back the Stream Protection Rule.

And last week, things came full circle when the president nominated Gardner to lead the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, the very office he had vehemently criticized on behalf of a client in the coal industry.

Environmentalists were, naturally, outraged. The Sierra Club called the idea of Gardner running a government agency that oversees mining operations “akin to hiring a wolf to guard sheep.”

But while the choice of Gardner may have been galling to the group, it was in no way surprising. In fact, it is one of the more succinct illustrations of how government is being run in the age of Trump.

Nearly a year since he won election, the president has turned federal agencies over to the private industries that they regulate. And he has done so to a degree that ethics groups say they have never witnessed.

The Daily Beast examined 341 nominations the president has made to Senate-confirmed administration positions. Of those, more than half (179) have some notable conflict of interest, according to a comprehensive review of public records. One hundred and five nominees worked in the industries that they were being tasked with regulating; 63 lobbied for, were lawyers for, or otherwise represented industry members that they were being tasked with regulating; and 11 received payments or campaign donations from members of the industry that they were being tasked with regulating.

Of the 162 nominees who didn’t have an overt conflict, 19 had either given money to or been a surrogate for Trump’s campaign (many of them ending up in ambassadorships), while 24 were career appointments or reappointments.

Of the 179 nominations with a conflict, not all proved successful. Some nominees, like Gardner, await consideration. Others, such as fast food tycoon and one-time Labor secretary hopeful Andy Puzder, had their nominations withdrawn. But many have been confirmed by the Senate and sit in positions to influence a vast array of executive policy.

“The depth of the ties of the industry is pervasive,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the group Public Citizen. “With the Trump administration we are seeing complete regulatory capture and quite frankly it will be the defining feature of this administration.”

Asked about the administration’s routine appointments of individuals from industries they’re being tasked with regulating, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told The Daily Beast that the administration has thoroughly followed through on President Trump’s promises to root out corruption and special interest influence in Washington.

“Following the President’s pledge to ‘drain the swamp,’ the Trump Administration has put in place historically strong lobbying restrictions for current and former Administration staff,” Walters said in an email. “Under the Trump administration, expenditures on lobbying have decreased, as firms stop finding it as profitable to try to buy influence and rig the game in their favor.”

View the post here.