Tag: Trump administration nepotism

Interior watchdog: Senior official misused post to aid family

IG’s report comes after Trump’s firing or demotion of five other agencies’ watchdogs in recent weeks

A senior Interior Department official used his position to get a family member a job at the EPA, a violation of federal ethics rules and an abuse of office, the department’s inspector general said in a report released Friday.

The investigation found Assistant Secretary for Insular and International Affairs Douglas Domenech contacted an EPA official in person and via email in 2017 on behalf of a family member pursuing a job at the agency. Domenech also promoted a different family member’s wedding business to the same EPA official, according to investigators.

Interior spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said in an email the contacts occurred before the department stepped up its ethical compliance training. He did not dispute the IG’s findings. Continue reading.

Ryan Zinke Taps Cousin Of Anti-Federal-Land Zealot For National Park Advisory Board

Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Ellis Ivory, a retired Utah homebuilder, once donated $6,000 to Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory’s pro-land-transfer nonprofit.

Ellis Ivory, a retired Utah homebuilder and second cousin of anti-federal-land state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), is among the 11 people Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has chosen to serve on a newly resurrected National Park System Advisory Board.

The new members of the volunteer panel were announced this week, just days after Zinke and the Interior Department hosted Ken Ivory and members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative nonprofit backed by Charles and David Koch that advocates handing over control of federal lands to states. Even the broad association between the Interior Department and the radical movement opposing federal land stewardship again raises questions about the seriousness of Zinke’s public pronouncements on the issue.

Ken Ivory, a leader of the pro-land-transfer movement, is a former head of the right-wing think tank Federalism in Action’s Free the Lands project, which has argued that getting public lands out of the federal government’s hands is “the only solution big enough to tackle” today’s economic challenges. In 2012 he introduced legislation demanding that nearly all federal lands in Utah ― some 30 million acres ― be turned over to the state. The bill was passed and signed into law, but the lands have remained under federal control.

View the complete December 7 article by Chris D’Angelo on the Hufflington Post website here.