Tag: Trump Interior Department

Trump picks ex-oil lobbyist David Bernhardt for Interior secretary

President Trump is picking David Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, to be the Interior Department’s next secretary.

“I am pleased to announce that David Bernhardt, Acting Secretary of the Interior, will be nominated as Secretary of the Interior,” Trump tweeted Monday.

Bernhardt, whose past clients include oil companies and others with business before the Interior Department, will lead an agency that oversees about 500 million acres as well as the energy production on that land.

View the complete February 4 article by Timothy Cama and Miranda Green on The Hill website here.

Ryan Zinke told police a Post reporter caused a fracas at his house. Here’s what really happened.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Credit: Melina Mara, Washington Post, Getty Images

A newly released police report by U.S. Park Police, a division of Interior, fingers a mysterious reporter driving a Mercedes Benz SUV.

Before his rocky tenure as Secretary of the Interior came to a close in December, Ryan Zinke was a man on edge.

He was worried about liberal protesters, who had started badgering Trump officials and other conservatives in public places around Washington. He was suspicious of his anti-Trump neighbors. And he was furious with relentless news coverage of the proliferating inquiries into his management and behavior.

All of which helps to explain the strange night of Nov. 5, when Zinke called U.S. Park Police about a minor disagreement over parking outside his Capitol Hill home. The U.S. Park Police, a division of the Interior Department, is in charge of Zinke’s security.

View the complete February 1 article by Darryl Fears, Lisa Rein and Juliet Eilperin on The Washington Post website here.

Democrats want answers about the Interior Department’s decisions during the shutdown

A once vibrant Joshua Tree severed in half in an act of vandalism in Joshua Tree National Park on January 8, 2019. Credit: Gina Ferazzi, Los AngelesTimes via Getty Images

Controversial decisions made by the Interior Department and other agencies during the ongoing partial government shutdown are emerging as an immediate test of power for Democrats looking to hold the Trump administration accountable after re-taking the House of Representatives.

The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups — they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.

On Wednesday, Rep. Betty McCollum (DFW-MN), chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee for agencies including the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced that she intends to probe the Trump administration’s decisions during the shutdown.

View the complete January 25 article by E. A. Crunden on the ThinkProgress website here.

Interior Department Wants To Shut Down Public Information Access

Zinke’s Parting Insult Would Let Agencies Ignore ‘Unreasonably Burdensome’ FOIA Requests

Ryan Zinke is out as secretary of the Interior, but in his last days in office he tried to suppress what we can learn about the destruction Trump is doing to our nation’s public lands.

Attorney Daniel Jorjani, who previously worked at the Koch-funded Freedom Partners, drafted a proposed rule that would slash the public’s ability to get public records from the 10 agencies in the Interior Department.

The Freedom of Information Act, a federal law signed by former President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, allows people to ask for previously unreleased documents. The law was passed after thousands of federal employees accused of being communists were fired during the McCarthy era, and the Eisenhower administration wouldn’t release records from the dismissals.

View the complete January 2 article by Sarah Okeson on the DC Reports website here.

Justice Dept. investigating whether Zinke lied to inspector general

The Justice Department’s public integrity section is examining whether newly departed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to his agency’s inspector general investigators, according to three people familiar with the matter, a potential criminal violation that would exacerbate Zinke’s legal woes.

Zinke, who left the Trump administration Wednesday, was facing two inspector general inquiries tied to his real estate dealings in his home state of Montana and his involvement in reviewing a proposed casino project by Native American tribes in Connecticut. In the course of that work, inspector general investigators came to believe Zinke had lied to them, and they referred the matter to the Justice Department to consider whether any laws were violated, the people familiar with the matter said.

The department’s public integrity section has since been exploring the case, the people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The extent of its work is unclear, though the inspector general had questioned witnesses in an apparent attempt to scrutinize Zinke’s account, one of the people said.

View the complete January 3 article by Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey, Juliet Eilperin and Lisa Rein on The Washington Post website here.

Ryan Zinke’s Legal Troubles Are Far From Over

President Trump announced on Saturday that Ryan Zinke was resigning as interior secretary after a troubled tenure.Credit: Ryan David Brown for The New York Times

Ryan Zinke’s time in the Trump cabinet is ending, but his legal troubles are likely far from over.

When Mr. Zinke was forced to resign as interior secretary on Saturday, he joined a line of officials who have left the Trump administration under a cloud of ethics inquiries. But the investigations into Mr. Zinke’s actions are likely to continue, according to Delaney Marsco, the ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group. And if those inquiries turn out badly for him, Mr. Zinke still faces the threat of criminal penalties that could hobble his political future.

“It’s not a Get Out of Jail Free card to just quit,” Ms. Marsco said.

View the complete December 16 article by Julie Turkewitz on The New York Times website here.

Amid Corruption Charges, Zinke Is Leaving as Interior Secretary

Trump had expressed concern about allegations against former House member

Updated 12:35 p.m. | Embattled Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will be the latest senior official to leave the Trump administration after months of being dogged by corruption charges.

President Donald Trump made the announcement on Twitter, saying the former Montana congressman would be leaving his post at the end of the year.

“Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation,” the president said. “The Trump Administration will be announcing the new Secretary of the Interior next week.”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Secretary of the Interior @RyanZinke will be leaving the Administration at the end of the year after having served for a period of almost two years. Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation…….

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Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

…….The Trump Administration will be announcing the new Secretary of the Interior next week.

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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.

Zinke picks fight with key Dem at an odd time

Rep. Raúl Grijalva is prepared to work with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who on Friday tweeted that it is “hard” for the Arizona Democrat “to think straight from the bottom of the bottle.”

Zinke’s public insult of the likely incoming chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee was both a sign of the times in President Trump’s Washington, and the kind of deeply personal jab that managed to turn heads.

An oil industry lobbyist who’s been supportive of Zinke’s policies said the tweet didn’t benefit anyone, and he said it’s stirring more speculation that Zinke, who is under federal investigation for a number of alleged ethical breaches, may be planning to leave office soon.

View the complete December 4 article by Timothy Cama on The Hill website here.

Trump official trashes victims of California fire as death toll rises to 79

The Trump team has no decency.

Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior, Flickr

As families worry about more than 690 missing people and mourn the death of over 80 from the raging fires in California, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke choose to disparage victims and repeat Trump administration lies about the fires in a recent interview with Breitbart News, a far-right organization with ties to white nationalists.

“Many people were, quite frankly, like deer in the headlights. When the fire came through they were unprepared,” Zinke told Breitbart, referring to residents and business owners who suffered through the fires.

“I’m not sure that Paradise will return. … They’re strong people, but it’s not an affluent neighborhood,” he added.

View the complete November 20 article by Dan Desai Martin on the ShareBlue.com website here.