[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTIVIST GROUPS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
INVESTIGATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-115
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Natural Resources
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
or
Committee address: http://naturalresources.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
55-586 PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
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COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
BRUCE WESTERMAN, AR, Chairman
DOUG LAMBORN, CO, Vice Chairman
RAUL M. GRIJALVA, AZ, Ranking Member
Doug Lamborn, CO Grace F. Napolitano, CA
Robert J. Wittman, VA Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan,
Tom McClintock, CA CNMI
Paul Gosar, AZ Jared Huffman, CA
Garret Graves, LA Ruben Gallego, AZ
Aumua Amata C. Radewagen, AS Joe Neguse, CO
Doug LaMalfa, CA Mike Levin, CA
Daniel Webster, FL Katie Porter, CA
Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, PR Teresa Leger Fernandez, NM
Russ Fulcher, ID Melanie A. Stansbury, NM
Pete Stauber, MN Mary Sattler Peltola, AK
John R. Curtis, UT Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, NY
Tom Tiffany, WI Kevin Mullin, CA
Jerry Carl, AL Val T. Hoyle, OR
Matt Rosendale, MT Sydney Kamlager-Dove, CA
Lauren Boebert, CO Seth Magaziner, RI
Cliff Bentz, OR Nydia M. Velazquez, NY
Jen Kiggans, VA Ed Case, HI
Jim Moylan, GU Debbie Dingell, MI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX Susie Lee, NV
Mike Collins, GA
Anna Paulina Luna, FL
John Duarte, CA
Harriet M. Hageman, WY
Vivian Moeglein, Staff Director
Tom Connally, Chief Counsel
Lora Snyder, Democratic Staff Director
http://naturalresources.house.gov
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
PAUL GOSAR, AZ, Chairman
MIKE COLLINS, GA, Vice Chair
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, NM, Ranking Member
Matt Rosendale, MT Ed Case, HI
Wesley P. Hunt, TX Ruben Gallego, AZ
Mike Collins, GA Susie Lee, NV
Anna Paulina Luna, FL Raul M. Grijalva, AZ, ex officio
Bruce Westerman, AR, ex officio
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CONTENTS
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Page
Hearing held on Tuesday, April 30, 2024.......................... 1
Statement of Members:
Gosar, Hon. Paul, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Arizona................................................ 1
Stansbury, Hon. Melanie A., a Representative in Congress from
the State of New Mexico.................................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Walter, Scott, President, Capital Research Center,
Washington, DC............................................. 5
Prepared statement of.................................... 6
Painter, Richard W., S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate
Law, University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis,
Minnesota.................................................. 11
Prepared statement of.................................... 13
O'Neil, Tyler, Author, ``Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of
the Southern Poverty Law Center,'' Washington, DC.......... 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 20
Additional Materials Submitted for the Record:
Submissions for the Record by Representative Stansbury
Walter M. Shaub, Jr., Statement for the Record........... 41
United States Department of the Interior, Office of the
Solicitor, Letter to Committee dated August 9, 2023.... 57
United States Department of the Interior, Office of the
Secretary, Letter to Committee dated February 2, 2024.. 59
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF EXTREME ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTIVIST GROUPS IN THE DEPARTMENT.
OF THE INTERIOR
----------
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Natural Resources
Washington, DC
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:16 a.m. in
Room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Paul Gosar
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Gosar, Rosendale, Collins; and
Stansbury.
Dr. Gosar. The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the Subcommittee at any time.
The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear the testimony on
examining the influence of extreme environmental activist
groups in the Department of the Interior.
Under Committee Rule 4(f), any oral opening statements at
the hearing are limited to the Chairman and the Ranking
Minority Member. I, therefore, ask unanimous consent that all
other Members' statements be made part of the hearing record if
they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3(o).
Without objection, so ordered.
Do you guys have any people waiving on?
Ms. Stansbury. No.
Dr. Gosar. I will now recognize myself for my opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. PAUL GOSAR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF ARIZONA
Dr. Gosar. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our
witnesses for coming. Thank you for coming before the Committee
to discuss this critical issue, examining the influence of the
extreme environmental activist groups in the Department of the
Interior.
The Committee invited several non-profits, including the
Pueblo Action Alliance and the Wilderness Society, to join us
today. But unsurprisingly, they would prefer to keep the
American public in the dark regarding their cozy relationship
with the Department of the Interior under the Biden
administration.
Over the course of the 118th Congress, the Oversight and
Investigation Subcommittee has uncovered a track record of
close and potentially improper relationships with radical
environmental activist groups and the Department. While all
presidential administrators have their particular points of
view, which is to be expected, the issue at hand here is
twofold:
(1) at their core, most of these groups are fundamentally
opposed to the congressionally authorized missions of the land
management agencies that they seek to influence and,
increasingly, NOAA.
(2) some of these groups are also influenced by dark money
from unfriendly foreign sources like China. We now know that
China provides funding for many radical environmental groups,
such as CodePink, for the purpose of stopping America's natural
resources development and weakening our energy security. Not
only does this CodePink advocate for the end of fossil fuels
and domestic mining, but they are currently leading numerous
protests against Israel's response to the brutal terrorist
attack by Hamas on October 7.
The Committee is concerned that radical environmental
groups are now affecting critical decisions and rulemaking at
DOI regarding resource development, including the Chaco Canyon
withdrawal and the cancellation of the Twin Metals mineral
leases in the Superior National Forest.
Before joining the Biden administration, Secretary Haaland
was very involved with the PAA, and repeatedly advocated for
their preservationist policies to withdraw more land in the
Chaco Canyon from natural resource development. There is
evidence that she has maintained her close relationship with
PAA while serving as Secretary, in addition to her daughter
remaining employed to advocate on this issue.
In 2022, Secretary Haaland satisfied PAA's efforts by
issuing a public land order to officially withdraw over 330,000
acres, nearly a 110-mile radius of Federal land surrounding the
Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, for 20 years. In this
case, Secretary Haaland undoubtedly should have recused herself
to resolve any potential conflicts of interest.
Another concerning incident involved the Twin Metals mine
in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota. In
2018, the Federal Government had reinstated the mineral leases
for the prospective Twin Metals copper, nickel, and cobalt mine
project in northeast Minnesota. Then in 2020, various
environmental activist groups, including the Wilderness
Society, sued the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and
Wildlife Service, and the Forest Service over their decision to
renew the permits for Twin Metals.
Later, a FOIA request revealed that, while this litigation
was ongoing, then-Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Deputy
Chief of Staff Kate Kelly purportedly met with lobbyists from
the Wilderness Society, a lead plaintiff in the case in an off-
the-books meeting. At the same time, the Wilderness Society
apparently coordinated with DOI's lawyers on legal and policy
pathways regarding mining in northeastern Minnesota.
Then, in 2022, Secretary Haaland canceled the two-decades-
old mineral leases for Twin Metals and withdrew over 225,000
acres of mineral rich land in the same area for mineral
exploration and development. The coordination with the
Wilderness Society on this issue raises substantial concerns
regarding the undue influence exercised by the environmental
non-profits over the Biden administration.
Unfortunately, these two instances are only a drop in the
bucket when considering the full breadth of the damage done by
DOI working with radical non-profits to stymie domestic
resource development and make the United States less energy
secure.
Tomorrow, Secretary Haaland will come before the Committee
in a rare appearance to discuss the Interior's budget request,
so I hope she comes prepared to explain these seeming conflicts
of interest and their effect on her decision-making to the
American people.
Now, per usual, I don't expect my Democratic colleagues to
engage in the substance of this hearing today. However,
regardless of a Republican or Democratic administration,
Congress must keep the Federal Government in check and working
for the American people. The Committee will continue to uphold
this vital responsibility.
I will now recognize the Ranking Member, Ms. Stansbury, for
her opening statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. MELANIE A. STANSBURY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I signed up to
be the Ranking Member of this Subcommittee, I was genuinely
excited to get to work on issues that matter for the American
people, to work on climate change, water resources issues,
protecting our public lands, serving our Tribal Nations, all
issues that I have spent my entire career working on. But week
after week, I have sat here as this Subcommittee and others
across our Congress have become increasingly a stage for
political theater. And I have to say that it is extremely
disconcerting, and I hope we can get back to working for the
American people.
And I was especially dismayed after I read the prep
materials for this hearing, and saw that it was going to be yet
another partisan attack on our public servants at the
Department of the Interior, including on our Secretary, who, of
course, is a New Mexican and our nation's very first Indigenous
cabinet secretary.
But since this is the direction that the Majority has
decided to take the Committee and they want to talk about
conflicts of interest, I feel that it is incumbent upon us to
point out that the influence of dark money at the Department of
the Interior has never been more apparent than it was under the
Trump administration, when both of its Interior secretaries
were embroiled in dozens of scandals and ethical violations. Of
course, none of this is particularly surprising when the tone
is set at the top by President Trump, who has literally spent
most of his life involved in pay-to-play scandals.
In fact, the Oversight and Accountability Committee
released a Minority report just a few months ago called the
Mazars Report, which includes 156 pages of evidence compiled.
While in office, former President Trump and his companies
received at least $7.8 million from at least 20 different
foreign governments while they had business in front of the
White House. And the Saudi government, as we know, also gave
more than $2 billion to his son-in-law after he left office.
So, if we want to talk about influence peddling and
criminal behavior, let's talk about the former President and
the culture of influence that he brought not only to the White
House, but to the Department of the Interior under his tenure.
In fact, when you scratch the surface, what you find is
that the Trump Interior Department offered unprecedented access
to oil and gas, mining, and other special interests that
resulted in dozens of investigations and criminal referrals.
Efforts like a bribery scheme, in which a developer organized a
quarter million dollars in campaign donations on the same day
that his permit for a mega-development was announced, thanks to
the Trump Interior Secretary, the Secretary that lobbied on
behalf of so many extractive interests that he had to carry a
card around listing his conflicts, and had to reconfigure the
ethics department.
Another Trump secretary who received a criminal referral to
DOJ after he used his position to try to open a private
business in his home town and fired the Inspector General the
day before the news broke.
Or a previous Interior secretary under Bush, who was also
referred to DOJ for sharing insider information to Shell Oil,
which she then asked to work for.
Or a deputy that leaked documents to extractive industries
who were suing the Department and lied to Congress.
And finally, an offshore oil and gas agency at Department
of the Interior that was so corrupted that employees took
trips, gifts, and had cocaine-fueled parties with oil and gas
executives, and signed off on protocols that ultimately led to
the largest oil spill in American history.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. But what is common
across all of these instances is well-documented, well-
substantiated investigations of influence and unethical
behavior, all of which took place under Republican
administrations. Yet, here we find ourselves today in a hearing
where my colleagues are trying to manufacture a scandal tying
Secretary Haaland to environmental groups. For what? Doing her
job? Setting aside tribal sacred sites, conserving ecosystems,
protecting public lands, all things that fall under the mandate
of the Department of the Interior?
And ironically, they brought in two witnesses today to spin
this story who are affiliated with conservative organizations
funded by dark money donors and engaged in preparing for
another Trump administration.
So, let me just say this: one thing is clear. The depth,
breadth, and persistence of corruption that we saw under the
Trump administration must never be repeated again.
And like other hearings this Congress, it is peculiar that
my friends across the aisle are so focused on these political
fantasies while their own President is sitting in a courtroom
today, and while the Department of the Interior was engaged in
so many demonstrated legal and ethical failures, and that is
what the Oversight Committee should be focused on.
With that, I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentlelady. For a minute there I
thought you were talking about Burisma and Ukraine.
I am now going to introduce our witnesses.
First, we have Mr. Scott Walter, President, Capital
Research Center; Mr. Richard Painter, Professor of Corporate
Law, University of Minnesota Law School; and Mr. Tyler O'Neil,
Author.
Let me remind the witnesses that under Committee Rules, you
must limit your statement to 5 minutes, but your entire
statement will be made part of the hearing record.
To begin your testimony, push the ``talk'' button and get
started. At 4 minutes, you will see the light turn yellow. That
tells you to try to wrap it up. And when you see a red light,
stop.
I will now recognize Mr. Walter for your 5 minutes. Thank
you.
STATEMENT OF SCOTT WALTER, PRESIDENT, CAPITAL RESEARCH CENTER,
WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Walter. Chairman Gosar, Vice Chairman Collins,
distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the
honor of testifying. I am President of Capital Research Center,
where we study radical activists.
I claim no expertise in climate science, environmental
policy, and the like, but I am experienced in Federal policy-
making. That process requires the ability to join in honest
debate, to recognize that all policy choices have trade-offs,
and to engage rationally with people you may disagree with.
Unfortunately, today's radicals reject all these
prerequisites to good public policy. That is why Pueblo Action
Alliance joined other radical groups in a violent protest at
the Interior Department that led to over 50 arrests and sent at
least one police officer to the hospital. Yet, Secretary
Haaland's child, who works for the Alliance, posted photos of
this demonstration to Instagram and called her participation
``an honor.''
That is why the Pueblo Action Alliance issued a statement
on the death of George Floyd with hysterical language like,
``The institution of policing in the United States was created
to control, criminalize, and brutalize African and Indigenous
peoples on stolen land. Modern Amerikkkan''--three Ks in the
spelling--``police descend directly from slave patrols and
settler militias. Police and armed U.S. State agents are
working today, as they have always been designed to, as tools
of racist, settler, colonial, capitalist, and imperialist
violence, hand in hand with White vigilante terrorists.'' That
statement was issued in conjunction with the All African
People's Revolutionary Party, which seeks ``the total
liberation and unification of Africa under scientific
socialism.''
This extremist group was founded by an African dictator who
received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. Pueblo
Action Alliance is tied to another communist dictatorship
through its alliance with Cuba's Venceremos Brigades. The
Alliance's creative strategist glamorizes Cuban tyranny, saying
he ``experienced reverse culture shock'' when returning to
America from Cuba, a country Freedom House rates not free
because ``Cuba's one-party communist state outlaws political
pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and
severely restricts basic civil liberties.''
This isn't idealism, it is nihilism. The utopian nihilism
of extremists often ends in violent bloodshed. It never ends in
good policies that sane Americans desire. So, it is shocking
the Interior Department not only treats Pueblo Action Alliance
as a source of policy wisdom, but also appears to have made
official policy with bias toward the Alliance, and provided
improper assistance to the Alliance.
In one notorious case, Interior ignored the Navajo Nation
while crafting a policy that costs thousands of Navajos
millions of dollars, pushing tribe members into greater
poverty, according to the Standing Committee of the 25th Navajo
Nation Council.
This Committee's letters to the Interior Department
document multiple meetings between the Secretary and Pueblo
Action Alliance officials. The Secretary has promoted PAA by
having its insignia appear in public photographs beginning her
first day in office. PAA has promoted itself by such means as
posting those photographs on its Instagram. Activists have
promoted Secretary Haaland's involvement in a film produced by
the director of PAA which demands that oil, gas, and mineral
leasing outside the Chaco Culture National Historical Park be
ended, a question on which the Secretary officially ruled in
favor of PAA's demand.
Finally, there are many ways that the Secretary appears to
be influenced by her adult child, Somah. No wonder the
Committee is deeply concerned that PAA may have improperly
received non-public information from the Department.
The Wilderness Society is another example of environmental
extremism influencing Interior. I note it refused, as did the
Pueblo Alliance, to testify today. Again, radicals refuse
honest debate. The Wilderness Society's governing council has
two leaders from the most notorious source of foreign dark
money in politics today: Molly McUsic, head of both the Wyss
Foundation and its Berger Action Fund dark money group, and the
foreign national billionaire, Hansjorg Wyss himself. The
Society has worked with high-ranking Interior personnel on
issues like the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, and achieved
policy victories.
Other dark money actors powerfully influencing Interior
include the Arabella Network, to which Wyss has given hundreds
of millions, and the League of Conservation Voters, whose
extremist founder radicalized Arabella's founder, and who
suggested ``someday childbearing will be deemed a punishable
crime against society unless the parents hold a government
license.''
Clearly, radical environmentalists are exercising
considerable sway over the Interior Department. Americans,
especially the poor, deserve to enjoy the benefits of
inexpensive energy and abundant resources. Please protect them
from the radicals. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walter follows:]
Prepared Statement of Scott Walter, President, Capital Research Center
Chairman Gosar, Vice Chairman Collins, distinguished members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the honor of testifying. I'm president of
the Capital Research Center, where for decades we have studied
nonprofits and extremist groups.
I applaud the full Natural Resources Committee and this
subcommittee for your attention to threats posed by environmental
extremists and special interest groups attempting to influence the
Department of the Interior--matters that do not receive nearly as much
attention as they deserve from Congress and the media.
As we meet, radical extremists are showing their contempt for the
rule of law and for common decency on college campuses in this city and
across the country, harassing Jewish students and defending terrorist
attacks. Where left-wing radicals are concerned, a group may be best
known for its stand on a non-environmental issue, but the same group is
likely to espouse extreme environmental views, too. Take Code Pink, for
example, a group best known for zealotry related to foreign policy,
including a history of hatred of Israel: some years ago one of its
national directors claimed ``Israel is a terror state'' and its
existence is a ``war crime.'' \1\ In just the last two weeks Code Pink
protestors defending Hamas shut down San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge
to demand ``Palestinian liberation'' and disrupted the White House
Correspondents Dinner.\2\ When speaking of Palestine, Code Pink uses
the language of Indigenous people; for instance, ``CODEPINK recognizes
Palestinians as the rightful owners and caretakers of Palestine, their
Indigenous homeland.'' \3\
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\1\ https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/prominent-voices-demonize-
israel-regarding-conflict.
\2\ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/second-protest-
blocks-all-lanes-of-golden-gate-bridge-san-francisco/; https://
thehill.com/homenews/media/4626563-demonstrators-protest-media-
coverage-of-israel-hamas-war-at-white-house-correspondents-dinner/.
\3\ https://www.codepink.org/palestine.
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But like most extremist groups Code Pink also includes radical
environmentalism in its campaigns to manipulate federal departments,
including Interior. Code Pink joined others to harass Rep. Nancy Pelosi
at her office, demanding she pass the so-called Green New Deal.\4\ It
has celebrated the blocking of pipelines near Indian lands,\5\ and in
many other ways has made clear it sees all these radical causes as
inseparable.
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\4\ https://www.codepink.org/
green_new_deal_yes_war_weapons_planet_destruction_no.
\5\ https://www.codepink.org/
growing_a_local_peace_economy_daily_198.
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Under the current Administration, another radical group, Pueblo
Action Alliance (PAA), wages the best-known extremist campaign to
influence the Interior Department. Like Code Pink, PAA seamlessly
connects radical environmental views with radical foreign policy views
and shows a fondness for revolutionary violence--all obvious just from
the front page of PAA's website. That landing page currently shows a
PAA flyer for the COP28 climate conference that includes radical
environmentalism (denouncing carbon capture, hydrogen, water and
nuclear power; demanding a complete phase-out of fossil fuels), radical
feminism (calling for ``feminist regenerative economies''), and radical
anti-Israel policies (``solidarity with our Palestine relatives'').\6\
The page's very first words exhort: ``The Pueblo Revolt Never Ended:
1680 to Infinity,'' a reference to the uprising of Pueblo people
against Spanish colonizers in A.D. 1680, which brought the death of
hundreds of Spaniards.\7\ I do not defend the Spanish who mistreated
Pueblo people in past centuries, but to act as if present-day Pueblo
people are enduring similar horrors and to also suggest that murderous
uprisings should continue unto ``Infinity'' bespeaks a dangerous
radicalism that Americans across the political spectrum do not want
influencing any part of the federal government.
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\6\ https://www.puebloactionalliance.org/.
\7\ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo_Revolt, citing The Pueblo
Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New
Mexico, Andrew L. Knaut. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman. 1995.
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Radicalism's affinity for violence is also seen in the way PAA
media organizer Somah Haaland posted to Instagram photos of protests
that turned violent at the Interior Department. Haaland wrote, ``What
an honor it was to march with my Pueblo kin last week for
#Peoplevsfossilfuels week of action.'' The reference was to October
2021 protests that, as one media report put it, ``culminated in
outbreaks of violence and arrests at the Department of the Interior
that were `reminiscent of January 6th.' '' Dozens of radicals were
arrested, and ``at least one officer was hospitalized.'' \8\
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\8\ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11713413/Interior-
secretarys-daughter-Deb-Haaland-high-ranking-member-radical-
environmentalist-group.html.
PAA's vision is written in the kind of ``woke'' vocabulary found in
Columbia classrooms whose poorly educated students now terrorize their
Jewish peers on campus. PAA feverishly promises ``to dismantle and
eradicate white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, hetero-patriarchy
and extractive colonialism. Rematriation of everything stolen.'' \9\
Similarly, PAA issued a joint statement on the death of George Floyd
with the All African People's Revolutionary Party--New Mexico that
declared,
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\9\ https://www.puebloactionalliance.org/purpose.
The institution of policing in the United States was created to
control, criminalize, and brutalize African and Indigenous
peoples on stolen land. Modern Amerikkkan police descend
directly from slave patrols and settler militias formed in the
18th and 19th centuries. In the present day, their ranks are
riddled with outright fascists and white supremacists. Police
and armed US state agents like those of ICE, the DEA, the FBI,
DHS, and the US military are working today as they've always
been designed to--as tools of racist settler-colonial
capitalist and imperialist violence, hand in hand with white
vigilante terrorists.\10\
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\10\ https://www.puebloactionalliance.org/blog/justice-for-george-
floyd.
It is easy to see how anyone indoctrinated with this hysterical
ideology could turn violent, and in that vein, PAA's allies in the All
African People's Revolutionary Party proudly seek ``the total
liberation and unification of Africa under Scientific Socialism.'' \11\
The Party pays homage to its founder, Kwame Nkrumah, the dictator of
Ghana who received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ https://aaprp-intl.org/about-aaprp/.
\12\ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin_Peace_Prize.
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The PAA is also aligned with another Communist dictatorship through
its alliance with Cuba's Venceremos Brigades. Its website includes an
essay by PAA's ``creative strategist'' that glamorizes Cuban tyranny.
The strategist explains that when he returned to this country from
Cuba, he ``experienced reverse culture shock returning to an
environment with such a prominent white supremacist ideology.'' \13\ By
contrast, Freedom House rates Cuba as ``Not Free'' and reports,
``Cuba's one-party communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans
independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic
civil liberties.'' \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ https://www.puebloactionalliance.org/blog/solidarity-with-
cuba.
\14\ https://freedomhouse.org/country/cuba.
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Most Americans would likely assume that a group as radical as
Pueblo Action Alliance would not be taken seriously by the Department
of the Interior, but alas, the respect shown by the Department for
these extremists has become notorious. This Committee has pointed out,
in letters to the Secretary, that she and her department not only treat
PAA as a source of policy wisdom but have also created at least the
appearance of bias in official decisions and improper assistance to
PAA.\15\
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\15\ https://naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/
haaland_impartiality_and_misuse_of_ office.pdf.
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The letters document multiple meetings between the Secretary and
PAA officials. The Secretary has promoted PAA by having its insignia
appear in public photographs beginning from her first day in office.
PAA has promoted itself by such means as posting these photographs on
its Instagram account.\16\ Activists have promoted Secretary Haaland's
involvement \17\ in a film produced by the Director of PAA which
demands that oil, gas, and mineral leasing outside of the Chaco Culture
National Historical Park be ended--a question on which the Secretary
officially ruled in favor of PAA's demand. And finally there are the
many ways that the Secretary appears to be influenced by her adult
child, Somah Haaland, who is employed by PAA. No wonder the Committee
is deeply concerned that PAA may have improperly received nonpublic
information from the Department.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ https://www.instagram.com/p/CJwfQ9Wlkvg.
\17\ https://www.videoproject.org/our-story.html.
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Let there be no claims that such policy decisions as the withdrawal
of leasing outside Chaco Park indicates respect for Indigenous peoples.
In this case as in others, a ruling sought by one tribe is strenuously
opposed by another tribe. The Navajo Nation voted to reject the
Secretary's policy for the understandable reason that it expects her
decision to cost the tribe hundreds of millions of dollars.\18\ The
Navajos offered a compromise on this policy but were ignored by the
Department, which failed to consult with a tribe that was powerfully
affected by the policy. The result? According to the Standing Committee
of the 25th Navajo Nation Council, their tribe members ``will be pushed
into greater poverty.'' \19\
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\18\ https://www.thecentersquare.com/new_mexico/article_5bb6556e-
e9f6-11ed-a681-1f3ccee2b6f0. html.
\19\ Quoted in ibid.
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In response to this injustice, Kathleen Sgamma, head of a trade
group for small independent producers, objected that Somah Haaland has
``aggressively lobbied DOI and Congress to advance the Chaco
withdrawal.'' Sgamma added, ``Can you imagine if President Trump's
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt had a son who lobbied him on behalf
of Western Energy Alliance to increase leasing around Chaco? It would
have been unacceptable and rightfully criticized. Secretary Haaland's
situation is no different and probably worse since over 5,000 Navajos
stand to lose millions of dollars in income every year if the
withdrawal is approved.'' \20\
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\20\ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/4/interior-
secretary-deb-haaland-dogged-ethics-quest/.
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``Dark Money'' Used to Influence the Department
With that reference to former Interior Secretary Bernhardt we come
to another aspect of environmental extremism's influence on the
Department. Mr. Bernhardt became Secretary after environmental
activists had first hounded his predecessor Ryan Zinke from the office.
The same activists then hounded Bernhardt through the end of the
previous Administration. Those activists are part of the largest
network of ``dark money'' on either side of the political spectrum;
namely, the network operated by Arabella Advisors, and they have taken
precious little interest in this Administration's dubious conflicts of
interest and other ethics challenges.
The Arabella network's scheme is to create and manage multiple
``umbrella'' nonprofits which in turn pop up hundreds of fake
grassroots groups for all sorts of political purposes. In this case,
two of Arabella's nonprofits created a matching pair of fake groups
known as Western Values Project and Western Values Project Action in
2013.\21\ Those groups in turn spent years attacking first Zinke, then
Bernhardt, in hopes of influencing Interior policy and paving the way
for their radical allies such as Secretary Haaland.\22\
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\21\ See https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/western-values-
project/ and https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/western-values-
project-action/.
\22\ See Hayden Ludwig, ``Arabella's Long War,'' Capital Research
Center, November 12, 2021, https://capitalresearch.org/article/
arabellas-long-war-part-1/.
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Although the fake groups' websites tried to imply they were
launched in Helena, Montana, and operated by ``folks who live in the
Rocky Mountain West,'' \23\ in fact the groups were operated out of two
of Arabella's ``Beltway bandit'' shops, the New Venture Fund and the
1630 Fund in Washington, DC. They were staffed by Democratic and union
operatives, such as Chris Saeger, a former staffer of the Montana
Democratic Party and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
and two more Montana Democratic staffers, Jayson O'Neill and Yetta
Stein. The advisory board included a Colorado Democratic staffer,
Kjersten Forseth, who was also a former AFL-CIO political director.
Another advisory board member was Caroline Ciccone, who in 2019 ran
another New Venture Fund fake group, Restore Public Trust, which
attacked the Trump Administration. Ciccone, a former communications
director of the Democratic National Committee, previously led Americans
United for Change, a left-wing agitation group whose national field
director, Scott Foval, was recorded in 2016 by undercover journalists
bragging that the group had paid mentally ill and homeless people to
instigate violence at Trump campaign rallies. Within days, Foval was
fired.\24\
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\23\ https://web.archive.org/web/20191004111231/https:/
westernvaluesproject.org/about-us/.
\24\ Scott Walter, Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist
Billionaires Secretly Transforming America (New York: Encounter Books,
2024), p. 97-98.
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Another advisory board member was Kyle Herrig, who had been on the
board of Arabella's New Venture Fund as well as the advisory board of
at least five other Arabella fake groups, including Ciccone's Restore
Public Trust. Herrig came to Arabella from one of its largest and most
sinister donors, the foreign national billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.\25\
Because he lacks U.S. citizenship or even a green card, Mr. Wyss is
supposed to stay out of U.S. politics, but in years past he contributed
over $100,000 in illegal direct political contributions to such Members
of Congress as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), former Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA),
and former Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO). Unfortunately, the illicit donations
were not discovered until after the statute of limitations on the crime
had expired, though the contributions are still visible in the Federal
Election Commission's database.\26\
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\25\ Though Herrig's LinkedIn and Accountable.US bios hide his Wyss
connection, he is listed as an employee of the Wyss Foundation in its
2012 and 2013 IRS Form 990s: https://projects.propublica.org/
nonprofits/display_990/251823874/2013_10_PF%2F25-1823874_990PF_ 201212;
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/251823874/
2014_10_PF%2F25-1823874_990PF_201312.
\26\ https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/
?contributor_name=Wyss%2C+ Hansjoerg&contributor_name=Wyss%2C+Hansjorg.
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In more recent years, Wyss has contributed roughly half a billion
dollars to nonprofits active in politics and public policy, as
documented by the watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.\27\ A
quarter-billion of those dollars went over the last two decades into
the Arabella network, which launched the Western Values Project
nonprofits and other attack groups aimed at the previous
Administration. Wyss's deeply disturbing interventions in American
politics through his multibillion-dollar Wyss Foundation and its
connected ``dark money'' 501(c)(4) Berger Action Fund were the subject
of an oversight hearing in the House Ways and Means Committee,
exercising its supervision of the nonprofit sector, at which I was
honored to testify last December.\28\
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\27\ Americans for Public Trust, ``Foreign Influence in U.S.
Elections: How Swiss Billionaire Hansjorg Wyss and the Arabella
Advisors Network Uses Foreign Dark Money to Sway American Politics and
Policy,'' July 2023, https://americansforpublictrust.org/document/
report-foreign-influence-in-u-s-elections/.
\28\ https://waysandmeans.house.gov/event/oversight-subcommittee-
hearing-on-growth-of-the-tax-exempt-sector-and-the-impact-on-the-
american-political-landscape/.
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In 2020, the two Western Values Project nonprofits linked to
Herrig, plus Restore Public Trust linked to Ciccone and two more
Arabella fake groups (American Oversight, a judicial activist and
litigation group, and Allied Progress, which attacked Republican
cabinet officials) announced they were being rolled into one new
organization: Accountable.US, itself a former Arabella fake group later
established as an independent nonprofit headed by Herrig and Ciccone. I
note that Accountable.US also engages in such work as releasing an oppo
research dump on me and other witnesses ahead of our testimony at a
recent House Administration Committee hearing.\29\ APAArently
Arabella's children do not appreciate having the curtain pulled back on
this massive Wizard of Oz-style operation that takes in billions of
dollars every election cycle.\30\
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\29\ https://cha.house.gov/hearings?ID=CF598468-0C48-4DAC-9C0E-
0287E733682A. My testimony is available at https://capitalresearch.org/
article/scott-walter-testifies-to-committee-on-house-administration/.
\30\ https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/arabella-advisors/
#network-financial-overview.
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Before leaving the enormous influence exerted by the Arabella
network on the Interior Department across entire Administrations, and
the network's deep-rooted connections to Hansjorg Wyss, I should add
that Arabella's founder, Eric Kessler, was radicalized by an
environmental extremist, and that Mr. Wyss's private foundation and his
``dark money'' group are run by a woman, Molly McUsic, who likely first
met Mr. Kessler before he launched Arabella, when both of them were
working at the Department of the Interior under Bruce Babbitt, the
former head of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), where Kessler
previously worked.
The founder of the League of Conservation Voters, David Brower,
says he established it ``initially as part of Friends of the Earth,''
which he also founded, but the two groups ``later separated for legal
reasons (corporations are not supposed to contribute to political
candidates).'' \31\ Brower earlier ran the Sierra Club, but he so
radicalized and politicized the group that it lost its 501(c)(3)
charitable status.\32\ Brower also radicalized the undergraduate
Kessler in 1990, when Brower gave a speech at Kessler's Colorado
university. Kessler hitchhiked after Brower to San Francisco to work
with him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\31\ David R. Brower, ``Foreword'' to Friends of the Earth,
Progress As If Survival Mattered (San Francisco: Friends of the Earth,
1977), p. 8.
\32\ https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/
from_heresy_to_conventional_ wisdom_at_blinding_speed/##.
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It's unclear whether Kessler realized just how radical Brower was.
In a 1977 Friends of the Earth manifesto overseen by Brower, the
environmental apocalypse predicted was not then global warming but the
``population bomb.'' (Note that the religious fanaticism of radicals
seems to require the preaching of a secular apocalypse, though as the
various predictions of doom fail to come true, new apocalypses must be
manufactured.)
That 1977 manifesto's first chapter deals with the alleged threat
of population, and it calmly ponders horrific public policies to
``save'' the world from people:
Perhaps someday childbearing will be deemed a punishable crime
against society unless the parents hold a government license.
Or perhaps all potential parents will be required to use
contraceptive chemicals, the governments issuing antidotes to
citizens chosen for childbearing.\33\
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\33\ Progress As If Survival Mattered, pp. 16-17.
I do not know if Arabella's Kessler was aware of this depraved view
of alleged environmental dangers, nor if Secretary Haaland, as she
earned a lifetime score of 98 percent from the League of Conservation
voters for her service in Congress,\34\ was aware of the extremism that
gave birth to the League. But I do know it should be a warning to
anyone with oversight over the Department she now runs, and to the
Secretary herself: Radical environmentalism can blind its acolytes to
reality and lead to gruesomely anti-human conclusions, rendering such
radicalism entirely unfit as a basis for public policy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\34\ Walter, Arabella, p. 103.
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Even on the more mundane level of ``dark money'' influencing the
Interior Department, note that the Center for Public Integrity has
warned that the League of Conservation Voters has become a `` `dark
money' heavyweight,'' \35\ using its cash to influence the
Administration and thwart the desires for abundant minerals and
inexpensive energy felt by most Americans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\35\ https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/league-of-
conservation-voters-becoming-dark-money-heavyweight/.
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Another example of the combination of ``dark money'' and
environmental extremism comes from the Wilderness Society, which
regularly works to influence the Interior Department. The Society's
sister group, the Wilderness Society's Action Fund, reveals its crude
partisanship by donating only to Democratic candidates.\36\ The Society
itself has not one but two Wyss-world leaders on its governing council:
the aforementioned Molly McUsic, leader of the Wyss Foundation and its
Berger Action Fund ``dark money'' group, and Hansjorg Wyss himself.\37\
McUsic serves as a vice-chair of the Society's governing council.
Evidence of the Society's influence in the Interior Department appears
in such instances as the December 2, 2022 meeting with Deputy Secretary
Beaudreau to discuss Izembek National Wildlife Refuge policy,\38\ which
three months later led to a complete victory for the Society.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\36\ https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/
wilderness-society-action-fund/C00788992/pac-to-pac/2022.
\37\ https://www.wilderness.org/about-us/our-team/our-governing-
council.
\38\ https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/beaudreau-calendar-
dec-2022-redacted.pdf.
\39\ https://www.wilderness.org/articles/press-release/biden-
administration-rescinds-land-exchange-protects-izembek.
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Clearly, radical environmentalists with extreme views are
exercising considerable sway over the Department of the Interior. I
hope this serious problem will be addressed. Americans, especially the
poor, deserve to enjoy the benefits of inexpensive energy and abundant
resources, with which our nation has been blessed. You should protect
the country from radicals who attempt to push on the levers of
government to eliminate energy sources and to prevent the mining of the
very natural resources required to produce their preferred sources of
energy and transportation.
Thank you.
______
Dr. Gosar. Thank you, Mr. Walter. I now recognize Mr.
Painter for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD W. PAINTER, S. WALTER RICHEY PROFESSOR OF
CORPORATE LAW, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA LAW SCHOOL, MINNEAPOLIS,
MINNESOTA
Mr. Painter. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you for
inviting me here to testify today. I am a law professor in
Minnesota, where I have been ever since I was the chief White
House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005 to
2007. I was proud to serve in the Bush administration, where
the vast majority of the President's appointees conducted
themselves in accordance with the ethical obligations of
Federal employees. Unfortunately, the Interior Department was
not our most shining example of ethical compliance.
Federal land is our land. It belongs to the American
people. Congress holds this land in trust pursuant to the
United States Constitution. Authority is delegated to the
Interior Department to manage Federal land. This is over one-
quarter of the land mass of the United States. This land is
intended for use in the interests of the American people, which
includes, but is not limited to, environmentally sound
extraction of minerals, timber, oil and gas, and other
commercially productive uses.
But the problem is that, with this vast amount of power
over so much land, the Interior Department has been a source of
corruption for over a century, going back to the Teapot Dome
scandal of the 1920s all the way through the time when I was
the chief White House ethics lawyer for President Bush and we
had too many scandals in the Interior Department, up until
today.
The vast majority of this corruption over 100-plus years
has involved oil and gas, mining, and real estate developers
and casino operators such as Jack Abramoff's clients and others
seeking access to Federal lands on terms favorable to
themselves and detrimental to the public interest, not by the
means of lobbying the Interior Department in accordance with
the laws and the First Amendment right of every American to
petition the government for redress of grievances, but
illegally. And that is why we have had so many scandals over a
century.
It is conceivable that environmental groups also will seek
access to the Interior Department through improper and illegal
means. And I want to emphasize it is critically important that
the same rules apply to everybody, whether it is industry or an
environmental group.
That being said, I would have to say that worrying about
environmental groups taking over the Interior Department would
be somewhat analogous to worrying about pacifists taking over
the Department of Defense. Perhaps it will happen someday, but
that is not where we are now.
We have had over a century of corruption in the Interior
Department under presidents of Republican and Democratic
administrations. This is not a partisan issue. We have had
corruption in the Interior Department from industry groups that
want unfair access to the Department and want to use Federal
lands for their enrichment at the expense of the American
people.
I want to just discuss briefly the impact of what happens
in the Interior Department on the people in the state of
Minnesota. Former Republican Governor Arne Carlson and I, for
the past 5 years, have been fighting efforts by foreign
billionaires to build sulfide mines in the state of Minnesota.
We are famous for iron mining in Minnesota. We have the Iron
Range. That is not the sulfide mining range. And if we are
going to have sulfide mining in Minnesota, with all its
environmental complexities, we certainly don't need these
companies run by foreign billionaires coming into our state,
polluting our water, and then hightailing on out of there
because they have influence in Washington.
One of these companies, Glencore, was founded by Marc Rich,
a tax cheat pardoned by President Clinton. And Glencore opened
up a company called PolyMet that would run a mine in Minnesota,
and arranged a land swap deal with the Interior Department to
get Federal land for purposes of sulfide mining. Glencore, the
parent company, is close to Russian oligarchs. The CEO of
Glencore received the Medal of Freedom from Vladimir Putin.
Those are not the people we want engaged in sulfide mining in
northern Minnesota.
And the same for another company run by a Chilean
billionaire called Antofagasta. They want to open a mine right
in the Boundary Waters, and they got a lease from the Interior
Department. Over many decades, they have had this lease. What
happens is, as soon as President Trump was elected,
miraculously we find that the billionaire owner of this
company, this foreign billionaire, is leasing a house to Jared
and Ivanka Trump. Now, that is perfectly legal to be a landlord
for the incoming administration. I don't know what the rent
terms were on that lease, but I will assure you one thing. The
people of Minnesota do not want that sulfide mine in the
Boundary Waters, and we expect the Interior Department to stand
up for us.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Painter follows:]
Prepared Statement of Richard W. Painter, Law Professor at the
University of Minnesota
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for inviting me to testify today on the ethics and
integrity of the Department of the Interior.
I am a law professor at the University of Minnesota, and I was the
chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005
to 2007. I specialize in corporate law, securities regulation, lawyers'
ethics, and government ethics.
The subject of my testimony today is improper influence of special
interest groups on the Department of the Interior.
The federal government owns about six hundred forty million acres
of land, between a quarter and a third of the total land in the United
States. That is almost two acres of land for each of the approximately
three hundred and thirty million people living in the United States.
Federal land does not belong to oil companies, or to mining
companies, or to anyone else. It belongs to ``you and me'' \1\ the
American people.
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\1\ This Land in Your Land, As recorded by Woody Guthrie in April
1944
Under the United States Constitution, Congress holds this land in
trust. Your power as custodians of this land is set forth in the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Constitution Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2:
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all
needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other
Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this
Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims
of the United States, or of any particular State.
Public lands may only be disposed of with congressional
authorization. The Supreme Court has held that the power of Congress is
exclusive.. United States v. Fitzgerald, 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 407, 421
(1841); Utah Power & Light Co. v. United States, 243 U.S. 389, 403-04
(1917), although in the absence of Congressional action courts often
defer to the executive branch. United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236
U.S. 459, 469 (1915). Congress has from time-to-time reasserted control
over federal lands. See e.g. 43 U.S.C. Sec. 315. Grazing districts;
establishment; restrictions; prior rights; rights of-way; hearing and
notice; hunting or fishing rights. Pub. L. No. 94-579, Sec. 704(a), 90
Stat. 2792 (1976).
The time has come, once again, for Congress to act. I testify today
not about specific laws for best use and preservation of public lands,
but rather much needed reform of the ethics rules that bind the
Department of Interior.
Corruption of government officials is an ancient problem.\2\
Because the Interior Department controls such vast swaths of federal
land, and much of this Country's natural resources, however, corruption
of the Interior Department is perhaps an even greater risk. The
Interior Department has been a problem in government ethics for over a
century. The Interior Department was an ethics disaster zone in the
1920s, it was problematic during the Bush Administration when I was the
chief White House ethics lawyer, and the problems remain today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The late Judge John T. Noonan of the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals recorded the history of bribery over two thousand years in his
seminal book Bribes, published shortly after President Reagan appointed
him to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. John T. Noonan, Jr., Bribes
(1986).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will close my testimony with specific suggestions on what
Congress can do to prevent yet more scandals in the Interior Department
and assure that authority delegated to the Department by Congress is
used in a manner consistent with the interests of the owners of federal
land--the American people.
In April 1922, Senator John Kendrick (D-WY) sought investigation of
a secret deal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall, without
competitive bidding, leased the U.S. Naval Petroleum Reserve at
Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Senator Robert La
Follette (R WI) and the Senate Committee on Public Lands investigated.
Prosecutions soon followed. Fall was the first former cabinet officer
to go to prison.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Albert B. Fall v. United States, 49 F.2d 506 (D.C. Cir. 1931)
(conviction affirmed).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary Fall went to prison for bribery. He was not the victim of
a political prosecution. He was a felon. In the United States, no
person is above the law--not a cabinet member and not even a president.
There is no immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts that
are criminal.\4\ A Secretary of the Interior or any other Interior
Department official who for personal profit sells access to federal
land or natural resources on federal land commits a felony. See 18 U.S.
Code Sec. 201-Bribery of public officials and witnesses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ See United States v. Trump, 23-939, Brief of the United States
and oral argument, April 25, 2024; review on cert. of U.S. v. Trump,
No. 23-3228 (D.C. Cir. 2024).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
But criminal laws cannot be the only constraint on the affairs of
the Interior Department. We should not delegate management of vast
portions of the United States to a federal agency that can do whatever
it wants, whenever it wants, so long as prosecutors cannot prove a
public official committed a crime.
There have been way too many Interior Department scandals to
mention all of them in my testimony. I note a few.
When I came to the White House in February 2005, lobbyist Jack
Abramoff faced criminal charges for corrupt dealings with clients and
the government. Much of his activity centered on the Department of
Interior and misuse of statutes and rules intended to allow Indian
Tribes specific privileges in lobbying the government about use of
tribal land and federal land. Abramoff used--indeed abused--these
federal laws to make profits for himself and the casino industry. J.
Steven Griles, former Deputy Secretary of the Interior was sentenced to
ten months in prison for obstructing the U.S. Senate's investigation
into Abramoff.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See Department of Justice Press Release, June 26, 2007, Former
Interior Deputy Secretary Steven Griles Sentenced to 10 Months in
Prison for Obstructing U.S. Senate Investigation into Abramoff
Corruption Scandal, https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/
07_crm_455.html
We had other problems during the Bush Administration. A New York
Times article summarizing an Inspector General's report on an Interior
Department program that managed oil and gas royalties from federal
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lands, stated:
``The report says that eight officials in the royalty program
accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded
limits set by ethics rules including golf, ski and paintball
outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert,
a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball
game.
The investigation also concluded that several of the officials
`frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used
cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil
and gas company representatives.' '' \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Charles Savage, Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior
Department, New York Times, September 10, 2008, https://
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html
None of this behavior was disclosed to the White House ethics
office during my watch. I assure you I would have recommended immediate
dismissals if it had.
More recently, during the Trump Administration, Interior Secretary
Ryan Zinke faced allegations that he misused his position to advance a
commercial development project in his Montana hometown and may have
lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement. He was also
accused of making false statements during a probe of a Native American
casino development.\7\ Zinke was the subject of over a dozen
investigations by either the Interior Department Office of the
Inspector General (OIG), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), or
the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). No criminal charges were filed and
none of these allegations have been proven in court, but they are
concerning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ The OIG found that Zinke used his office and taxpayer resources
for personal gain, used a personal email account to communicate
information, and may have lied to the OIG about it. See https://
www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/interior-secretary-
zinke-resigns-amid-investigations/2018/12/15/481f9104-0077-11e9-ad40-
cdfd0e0dd65a_story.html and https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-
environment/2022/08/24/ryan-zinke-misled-investigators-watchdog-report/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zinke's successor, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt disclosed
over two dozen former clients and employers presenting potential
conflicts of interest.\8\ Hopefully these conflicts were appropriately
managed by Interior Department ethics lawyers, but Bernhardt's
appointment is just one example of the long-standing close ties between
senior Interior Department officials and private industry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Marc Rehmann, David Bernhardt Is President Trump's Most
Conflicted Cabinet Nominee, American Progress, March 15, 2019. https://
www.americanprogress.org/article/david-bernhardt-president-trumps-
conflicted-cabinet-nominee/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 19, 2022, the Interior Department OIG released a report of
its investigation into whether Bernhardt violated the Lobbying
Disclosure Act of 1995 when he represented Westlands Water District as
a lobbyist before and after serving as Interior Secretary.\9\ Bernhardt
refused to be interviewed and OIG was not able to make a determination.
On January 19, 2023, OIG issued a report on whether Bernhardt violated
the Ethics Pledge and conflict of interest rules by participating in
matters involving the California Central Valley Project, a large
Federal water project under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of
Reclamation.'' \10\ Once again, Bernhardt declined to be interviewed
and OIG did not reach a determination.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Office of Inspector General, Former Secretary's Alleged
Lobbying Disclosure Act Violation Before Joining the U.S. Department of
the Interior as Deputy Secretary, Report No: 20-0393, Department of the
Interior, May 19, 2022. https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/
oig-reports/DOI/WebRedactFormerSecretarysAllegedLDAViolation.pdf
\10\ Office of the Inspector General, Allegations of Ethics
Violations by Former U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Were Not
Substantiated, Report Number: 19-0313, Department of the Interior,
January 19, 2023. https://www.doioig.gov/sites/default/files/2021-
migration/
WebRedacted_AllegationsofEthicsViolationsbyFormerDOISecretaryWereNotSubs
tantiated.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 11, 2022, Committee Democrats made a criminal referral to
the Department of Justice outlining evidence of a quid pro quo between
Trump administration officials, including Bernhardt, and real estate
developer Mike Ingram, the owner of El Dorado Holdings, which proposed
to build the Villages at Vigneto (Vigneto), a large housing and
commercial development near the endangered San Pedro River in Benson,
Arizona. At the same time as the Army Corp of Engineers permit for the
project was re-opened, Ingram and other Arizona donors gave about a
quarter of a million dollars to the Trump Victory Fund and the
Republican National Committee. The question, not yet proven one way or
the other, is whether this donation was in exchange for the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service changing its position about a Clean Water Act
permit for Vigneto.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ House Committee on Natural Resources, Letter of Criminal
Referral to U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. House of Representatives,
May 11, 2022. https://democrats-naturalresources. house.gov/download/
grijalva-porter-to-doj-regarding-villages-at-vigneto&download=1
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In none of these instances has criminal wrongdoing yet been proven.
Nonetheless there have been so many allegations backed up by
substantial evidence about corruption in the Interior Department that
the American people ought to be concerned. Congress also should be
concerned.
Yet another problem is the growing influence of foreign
corporations, some with ties to foreign governments. Arne Carlson,
former Republican Governor of Minnesota, and I have vocally opposed
efforts of mining conglomerates controlled by foreign billionaires, to
open sulfide mines near the Boundary Waters and Lake Superior
watershed. Sulfide mining is not like the iron mining Minnesota is
famous for. A sulfide mine loosens up rocks and minerals deep
underground and can turn water into the color of orange hair dye.
Whether or not we like orange hair dye, Minnesotans don't want their
lakes and rivers looking like that.
One of these mining companies, PolyMet, in 2017 arranged a land
swap with the Interior Department to acquire federal land for sulfide
mining. Litigation by environmental groups against the Interior
Department continues to this day. See Center for Biological Diversity
v. Haaland (D. Minn.) Case No. 22-cv-181 (PJS/LIB) (seeking an Order of
the Court voiding the land exchange between the Forest Service and
PolyMet; setting aside and vacating the various reports, opinions, and
assessments created by defendants). PolyMet (now NorthMet) is
controlled by Swiss mining conglomerate Glencore, founded by a tax
cheat Marc Rich, pardoned by President Clinton. Glencore recently has
had close ties with Russian oligarchs, and in 2017 Glencore's CEO Ivan
Glasenberg received the Presidential Medal of Friendship from Vladimir
Putin.\12\ These are not the people we want opening a sulfide mine in
Minnesota on federal land.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ See Jack Farchy, Putin Awards Glasenberg Order of Friendship
After Rosneft Deal, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, April 10, 2017, https://
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-10/putin-awards-glasenberg-
order-of-friendship-after-rosneft-deal
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yet another sulfide mine on a lease of federal land, adjacent to
the Boundary Waters, was championed by federal officials in the Trump
Administration. This mine would be controlled by Antofagasta, a
corporation owned by a billionaire from Chile. The same billionaire in
2017 also leased an expensive house he had purchased in Washington DC
to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.\13\ I have no idea what the rent
was, but this landlord's focus was not real estate. He was in the
sulfide mining business. Despite Minnesotans' overwhelming opposition
to sulfide mining in the Boundary Waters, the Trump Administration
supported this mine. Fortunately, that decision was reversed during the
Biden Administration.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Mark Maremont, Ivanka Trump's Landlord Is a Chilean
Billionaire Suing the U.S. Government: President Donald Trump's
daughter and her husband, White House adviser Jared Kushner, live in a
Kalorama house owned by a Chilean business titan. His company is suing
the U.S. over a Minnesota mine, Wall Street Journal, March 8, 2017,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanka-trumps-landlord-is-a-chilean-
billionaire-suing-the-u-s-government-1489000307
\14\ U.S. Department of the Interior, Press Release: Interior
Department Takes Action on Mineral Leases Improperly Renewed in the
Watershed of the Boundary Wates Wilderness, 01/26/2022, https://
www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-takes-action-mineral-
leases-improperly-renewed-watershed-boundary
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Environmental groups also seek to influence the Interior
Department. While their resources are nowhere near as vast as those of
industry groups, they must play by the same rules. We can't have one
set of rules for industry and another for nonprofits. Furthermore, it
is not always easy to discern who is funding nonprofits and whether
industry or other special interests stand behind them.
A recent Inspector General's report points out a violation of the
Biden ethics pledge by Nada Culver, the Bureau of Land Management's
director of policy and programs.\15\ The inspector general concluded
that Culver met with her previous employer, the Wilderness Society, on
potential changes to regulation of oil and gas development and climate
change. The inspector general apparently also concluded that Culver did
so unintentionally and followed ethics guidance given to her, and that
these meetings did not affect Bureau policy decisions. Intent, however,
is not determinative--a violation of the ethics pledge is a violation
(intent in relevant in criminal law, but violations of the ethics
pledge are not criminal). The fact that a previous employer was an
environmental advocacy organization rather than a private company also
is not a factor in the ethics pledge. A violation of the ethics pledge
is not a criminal offense, but still should be avoided.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Office of the Inspector General, Bureau of Land Management
Official Did Not Comply with the Federal Ethics Pledge, Department of
the Interior, August 18, 2022, https://www.doioig.gov/sites/default/
files/2021-migration/WebRedacted_BLMEthicsPledgeViolation.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We did not have this ethics pledge during the Bush Administration.
Senior officials met with their former employers frequently as they had
during the Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Reagan Administrations. Many
of these officials had been previously employed by oil and gas, mining,
or energy companies or by trade associations. As the White House ethics
lawyer, I did not like these meetings with former employers, but there
was little I could do about them. At that time, no rule prohibited
them.
President Obama's ethics pledge, drafted by Ambassador Norman Eisen
and embodied in an executive order in 2009, changed this.\16\ Similar
language was used in Trump and Biden Administration ethics pledges.
Meetings with previous employers to discuss federal policy are
prohibited, even if the language of the ethics pledge is not as clear
as it should be. Violation of the ethics pledge is not a criminal
offense, but it should be taken seriously. The ethics pledge should be
enforced. A single violation is not necessarily a firing offense, but
this must be taken seriously.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Executive Order 13490--Ethics Commitments By Executive Branch
Personnel, January 21, 2009.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do we fix the ethics problems in the Interior Department?
First, we must realize that government ethics is not a partisan
issue. Republicans and Democrats have an interest in protecting our
federal lands and in the integrity of the Interior Department.
Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters demand higher standards
of ethics in government, Congress should pass legislation that will
improve ethics in the Interior Department and other federal agencies.
It is your choice whether to turn this hearing into a partisan
competition between members making accusations--true of false--against
the Interior Department under a president of the other political party,
while defending everything that happened under a president of their
own. Voters, however, see right through that. We want change, not
partisan acrimony.
Second, we must understand what the real problem is, and has been
since the Teapot Dome scandal. Most of the corruption in the Interior
Department is on account of private enterprises--oil and gas companies,
mining companies, developers and casino operators. Environmental groups
also will seek to assert influence, hoping to even the playing field.
Some might even break the rules and should be held accountable. But
worrying about extreme environmental groups trying to take over the
Interior Department would be like worrying that pacificists will take
over the Defense Department. Lockheed Martin and Boeing Corporation
surely have closer ties with the Defense Department than your local
Quaker Meeting House. Likewise, it is persons seeking profit from
misuse of federal lands who for over a century have sought influence in
the Interior Department.
Contacts with former employers are a major problem. The Interior
Department should promulgate its own regulations prohibiting senior
officials from engaging in policy discussions with their former
employers or the former employers of more senior officials in the
Department. One of the ways lobbyists get around the ethics pledge is
to lobby a government officer's subordinates, often dropping the name
of their boss. That should not be permitted.
18 USC 208 prohibits financial conflicts of interest for all
federal employees. The accompanying financial disclosure regime,
however, is deficient. As I have testified before in this House,\17\
the financial disclosure form needs to list the financing of separately
incorporated entities in which the public official owns a controlling
interest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ Testimony of Richard W. Painter Before the Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing
entitled Legislative Proposals for Fostering Transparency March 23,
2017.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spousal lobbying of an agency is yet another problem, but it is
currently allowed in most instances.\18\ The Interior Department should
say no to this. Individuals outside the government, including spouses,
have the First amendment right to lobby, but the Interior Department is
not required to give them preferential access not available to every
other American.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ See Richard W. Painter, Getting the Government America
Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference (Oxford U. Press
2009) at 184 (``Another increasingly important personal connection
comes through spouses. One spouse serves in government, while the other
lobbies. This is the so-called `Washington power-couple phenomenon.'
'')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Department decides who gets preferential access to its most
senior officials. Persons personally connected with senior officials
should only be afforded the level of access available to a member of
the public unknown to the Department. This should include lobbying by
grown children of Interior Department officials.
It would probably go too far to exclude employers of these family
members from lobbying senior officials in the Department but the family
members themselves should not participate in Interior Department
meetings other than meetings open on similar terms to the public. Under
existing ethics rules, and even the ethics pledge, however, many such
private meetings with well-connected individuals are now permitted.
Ethics rules can't monitor or prohibit discussions Interior
Department officials have with their own friends or family members
about broad policy issues also debated in the public forum.\19\
However, disclosure of nonpublic information about the Department to
persons outside the government should in most circumstances be
prohibited. When nonpublic agency information is disclosed, almost
always it is private industry, including persons engaged in trading in
securities, who benefit.\20\ On at least one prior occasion the
Interior Department Inspector General found that a senior official, the
Director of Fish and Wildlife, had improperly disclosed nonpublic
information to private parties.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Secretary Haaland's adult child, Somah Haaland has advocated
on a matter pending before the Interior Department, but I have not seen
evidence that Somah Haaland lobbied Secretary Haaland, or other
presidential appointees in the Department.
\20\ See Donna Nagy and Richard W. Painter, Plugging Leaks and
Lowering Levees in the Federal Government: Practical Solutions for
Securities Trading Based on Political Intelligence (with Donna Nagy),
ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW (2014).
\21\ See Department of the Interior Office of the Inspector
General, Report of Investigation, Julie MacDonald, Deputy Assistant
Secretary Fish, Wildlife and Parks (March 2007) (finding violation of
under 5 C.F.R. 9 2635.703 Use of Nonpublic Information and 5 C.F.R. 5
2635.101 Basic Obligation of Public Service, Appearance of Preferential
Treatment).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Undisclosed gifts are yet another problem. Federal gift rules and
disclosure rules are detailed, but too often are not followed. For
example, I repeatedly told senior White House officials and Interior
Department ethics lawyers that free rides on private jets are
prohibited under the gift rules and in rare exceptions where free
travel can be accepted, it must be reported. I and other ethics lawyers
ridiculed what we called the ``empty seat theory'' of corporate jet
travel: the specious argument that a government employee can accept and
not disclose a free ride on an oil company jet because the jet had an
empty seat and the free trip cost the company no money. This same
prohibition on free travel applies to federal judges, and the White
House discussed it with several judges, including prospective nominees
to the Supreme Court.\22\ The existing gift rules are sufficient and do
not need amending, but Congress should increase the penalties for
violation of these rules and failure to disclose gifts from prohibited
sources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ But see Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica
Misleads Its Readers, WALL ST. J. (June 20, 2023) (defending an
undisclosed free trip on a private plane to Alaska).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congress also needs to fix its own ethics problems. First, Members
of Congress should not own--and trade--energy company stocks while
regulating/deregulating the energy industry. Such financial conflicts
of interest are legal because Congress has not applied the criminal
conflict of interest statute, 18 USC 208, to itself. But this is
unseemly. Congress should pass a law applying to Congress the conflicts
of interest rules that apply to the executive branch, including the
Interior Department.
Second, our campaign finance system is an invitation to corruption.
Last June I testified before the Senate Budget Committee about the
enormous expenditures by fossil fuel companies on electioneering
communications, lobbying and other attempts to influence Congress and
the Executive Branch.\23\ Some Members of the Committee took this
subject seriously. Other senators strayed into the irrelevant.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\23\ Testimony of Richard W. Painter before the U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Budget, Hearing ``Democracy Distorted: Unraveling the
Consequences of Fossil Fuel Dark Money in Politics,'' June 21, 2023,
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Mr.%20Richard%20Painter%20-
%20 Testimony%20-%20Senate%20Budget%20Committee1.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sincerely hope the Members of this Committee will take ethics in
government seriously. That includes careful attention to the issues
raised in today's hearing and also fixing a campaign finance system
that gives polluters an outsized influence in Congress as well as in
the Interior Department.
Foreign money is another concern. Foreign money comes mostly on the
industry side, but theoretically could also infiltrate nonprofit
organizations that pretend to advocate for the environment but are
really acting on behalf of foreign principles.
It is important that American environmental advocacy organizations
not be infiltrated by extremists or foreign adversaries. We should be
vigilant about attempts by China to influence American nonprofits, as
well as governments in the Middle East that fund organizations that
deny the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. We should remember that
Middle East oil money comes from an industry that has profited
enormously from CO2 emissions. There is little evidence of foreign
governments or extremists infiltrating the major environmental advocacy
organizations in the United States. Let's keep it that way.
Reform of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) is
essential. I have spoken of sulfide mining companies controlled by
foreign billionaires who seek to influence public opinion so they can
open sulfide mines in Minnesota. Foreign agents have a largely
unconstrained opportunity to influence our government, but they must
disclose who they are under FARA. Too many foreign agents do not
disclose. The rules need to be clarified and enforcement improved. At
the same time, FARA should not be used to make false allegations
against environmental organizations or engage in political witch hunts.
In conclusion, the Interior Department is vulnerable to corruption
by special interests. Congress has delegated to it broad authority to
administer federal lands covering over a quarter of the Country. These
lands belong to you and me, the American people. Natural resources
extraction by private industry on federal land can generate enormous
wealth for the few but may or may not also serve the public welfare.
That depends on the facts. The Interior Department should administer
federal lands entrusted to it according to the facts and the interests
of the American people, not the political influence of moneyed special
interests.
The American people also are entitled to their share of what
natural resources on federal land are worth, a share that should not be
diminished because special interests buy off officials in the Interior
Department, politicians, or political parties. Government ethics reform
is an important way in which Congress can protect the value of federal
land, our land, for perpetuity.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and Members of this
Committee, for your attention to these serious matters.
______
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. I now recognize Mr.
O'Neil for his 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF TYLER O'NEIL, AUTHOR, ``MAKING HATE PAY: THE
CORRUPTION OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER'', WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. O'Neil. Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Stansbury,
extreme environmental groups have broad sway in the Interior
Department. In my remarks, I plan to show how these groups
affect policy, how their former staff now help lead Interior,
and how a leftist group that demonizes conservatives is
influencing Interior's efforts to be more inclusive.
In July 2023, the Sierra Club and its allies asked an
agency at Interior to crack down on oil and gas in the Gulf of
Mexico. Two months later, Interior released a 5-year plan that
included the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in the
Gulf in history. We know because Secretary Haaland bragged
about it. This plan is currently facing a lawsuit because
America's largest fossil fuel industry association says the
plan will harm American consumers and threaten our energy
security.
Earlier this very month, Interior announced its 5-year plan
for wind energy. While it restricts oil and gas to 3 lease
sales, it plans for 12 offshore wind auctions. The Sierra Club
celebrated the move, and pledged to continue collaborating with
the Biden administration.
Oil is cheaper and more reliable than wind energy, and
America has the best track record of generating the least
emissions while drilling for oil. Wind also requires strip
mining for rare Earth minerals, leaving toxic by-products. Yet,
Interior is promoting wind energy. The left's dark money
network helps explain why.
While Democrats were obsessed with the Koch brothers, a New
York Times analysis shows that the left's dark money network
spent more than comparable conservative groups. The left-wing
Arabella Advisors and the Tides Foundation set up non-profits
to allow donors to pour money into specific projects without
disclosing what the money does.
The Arabella Network's new venture fund funded and launched
Governing for Impact, for example. Governing for Impact bragged
that the Biden administration acted on more than 20 of its
recommendations.
The Center for American Progress, which advocates for
environmental justice, received more than $3 million from the
Arabella Network. Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior is
directing $2 billion in funds through the so-called Inflation
Reduction Act. Who determines where these funds go? Center for
American Progress founder, John Podesta.
Meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation, an
environmentalist group that promoted Al Gore's film, ``An
Inconvenient Truth,'' received nearly $1 million via Arabella
non-profits. NMFS's former employees now hold positions of
power at Interior.
Four-year NWF staffer Tracy Stone-Manning is now the
Director at the Bureau of Land Management. She notoriously sent
a threatening letter on behalf of eco-terrorists who spiked
trees to cause physical harm to loggers. She later says she
does not condone tree spiking or terrorism of any kind.
Laura Daniel-Davis, who worked at Interior under Obama
before joining the NWF for 3 years, is now the second in
command at Interior. She is only in an acting role, however,
because the Senate would not confirm her. Senator Joe Manchin
opposed her for valuing the left's radical climate agenda, his
words, ahead of Alaska's energy needs.
The National Wildlife Federation also takes credit for
climate smart conservation, a project it claims it developed
with its Federal agency partners, such as the National Park
Service.
Of course, these ties to the Interior shouldn't come as a
surprise. A 2009 Inspector General report found that staff at
the Bureau of Land Management had worked so closely with NWF
that they may have violated the law: NWF staff were writing and
editing official BLM materials.
Finally, Interior recently convened a committee to re-
evaluate place names to remove derogatory terms. That seems
noble, but Secretary Haaland named a divisive figure to the
committee. Kimberly A. Probolus had previously worked with the
Southern Poverty Law Center to help with its project, shaming
officials into removing public symbols of the Confederacy. In a
meeting of the Interior committee, she noted this previous
work, expressing her gratitude for the chance to continue to
work toward racial and social justice with Interior.
The SPLC, which has lobbied Interior on historical
designations, praised Haaland for including Probolus,
suggesting the committee should use SPLC resources on hate.
``No one should have to visit a national park whose name is
rooted in legacies of hate and white supremacy,'' SPLC's Lisa
Brooks said. Yet, the SPLC is far from a reliable arbiter of
hate. It is notorious for putting mainstream, conservative, and
Christian groups on a hate map with KKK chapters, scaring
donors into ponying up cash. If Interior wants to avoid being
derogatory, it shouldn't rely on the SPLC.
In short, the left's dark money network is propping up
radical environmentalist groups that help steer policy at
Interior. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. O'Neil follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tyler O'Neil, Author, ``Making Hate Pay: The
Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center''
How Radical, Dark Money-Funded Green Activist Groups Are Influencing
Policy at the Department of the Interior
My name is Tyler O'Neil. I oversee the day-to-day operations of The
Daily Signal as managing editor, though I am testifying in my personal
capacity. I wrote a book, ``Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the
Southern Poverty Law Center.''
Chairman Westerman, Ranking Member Grijalva, members of the
committee, I am honored to be invited to testify before you today.
Extreme environmental activist groups appear to have broad sway in
the Department of the Interior under President Biden. These groups can
often get their agenda implemented by the federal government without
the need to support new laws in Congress, encouraging bureaucrats who
are favorably disposed to their ideas to rewrite existing rules and
regulations.
For example, on July 12, 2023, six environmental groups petitioned
the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at Interior, urging the agency to
``end a routine practice of fast-tracking approval for offshore oil and
gas projects.'' The groups, including Earthjustice and the Sierra Club,
condemned Interior's ``categorial exclusion'' for oil and gas
activities beginning in 1981. The groups urged Interior to tighten
restrictions for ``oil-and-gas exploration and development in the
Gulf'' of Mexico.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Gulf and Environmental Groups Call on Interior Department to
End Routine Fast-Tracking of Offshore Oil Drilling Projects.''
EarthJustice. July 12, 2023. https://earthjustice.org/press/2023/gulf-
and-environmental-groups-call-on-interior-department-to-end-routine-
fast-tracking-of-offshore-oil-drilling-projects Accessed April 27,
2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two months later, Interior issued a press release bragging that it
announced the ``fewest offshore oil and gas lease sales in history''
for the Gulf of Mexico. Its plan for the 2024-2029 National Outer
Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program includes a maximum of
three potential oil and gas lease sales.
``The Biden-Harris administration is committed to building a clean
energy future that ensures America's energy independence,'' Interior
Secretary Deb Haaland said. ``The Proposed Final Program, which
represents the smallest number of oil and gas lease sales in history,
sets a course for the department to support the growing offshore wind
industry and protect against the potential for environmental damage and
adverse impacts to coastal communities.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ ``Reflecting America's Rapid and Accelerating Shift to Clean
Energy, Interior Department Announces Fewest Offshore Oil and Gas Lease
Sales in History in Proposed Final Program for 2024-2029.'' Interior
Department news release. Sept. 29, 2023. https://www.doi.gov/
pressreleases/reflecting-americas-rapid-and-accelerating-shift-clean-
energy-interior-department Accessed April 27, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The plan proved so extreme, it inspired legal action from America's
largest fossil fuel industry association, the American Petroleum
Institute. API sued Interior in February, arguing that the plan
restricting future offshore fossil fuel lease sales puts American
consumers at risk and threatens U.S. energy security.
``In issuing a five-year program with the fewest lease sales in
history, the administration is limiting access in a region responsible
for generating among the lowest carbon-intensive barrels in the world,
putting American consumers at greater risk of relying on foreign
sources for our future energy needs,'' Ryan Meyers, API senior vice
president and general counsel, told Fox News.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Catenacci, Thomas. ``Biden admin hit with legal challenge over
historic restrictions on offshore oil drilling.'' Fox News. Feb. 12,
2024. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-hit-legal-challenge-
historic-restrictions-offshore-oil-drilling Accessed April 27, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earlier this month, the Sierra Club praised new rules from Interior
laying out the five-year schedule for offshore wind leasing. While
Interior restricts oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf to 3, it plans
for 12 offshore wind auctions in federal waters between 2024 and 2028.
``We are enthusiastic about these developments and remain dedicated
to collaborating with the Biden administration and all stakeholders to
maximize the potential of offshore wind, which is crucial for enhancing
energy security and meeting our climate goals,'' Sierra Club Deputy
Legislative Director Xavier Boatright said (emphasis added).\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ ``Sierra Club Statement on Biden Administration Five-Year Plan
for Offshore Wind.'' Sierra Club news release. April 24, 2024. https://
www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2024/04/sierra-club-statement-biden-
administration-five-year-plan-offshore-wind Accessed April 27, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oil is cheaper and more reliable than wind energy. In 2022,
petroleum accounted for 31% of U.S. energy production, while all
renewable energy sources only accounted for 13%. Wind energy accounted
for only 29% of that 13%, meaning that wind energy accounts for about
3.8% of America's energy production.\5\ Wind energy also involves
harvesting rare earth minerals through strip mining, an intensive
process with toxic biproducts.\6\ Yet Interior is investing in wind and
turning away from oil, largely for ideological reasons.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ ``U.S. energy facts explained.'' U.S. Energy Information
Administration. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/
Accessed April 27, 2024.
\6\ Allen, Virginia. ``Fact-Checking Wind and Solar Claims: Climate
Expert Makes Case for `Realism.' '' The Daily Signal. April 3, 2024.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/03/fact-checking-wind-solar-claims-
climate-expert-makes-case-realism/ April 27, 2024.
How are these activist groups able to influence the administration
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
in this way?
It may come as a surprise to many Democrats that the Left has a
larger ``dark money'' network than the Right. A New York Times analysis
showed that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations
that generally align with Democrats spent more than $1.5 billion in
2020, compared to only $900 million spent by a comparable sample of the
most politically active groups aligned with Republicans.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Vogen, Kenneth P. and Shane Goldmacher. ``Democrats Decried
Dark Money. Then They Won With It in 2020.'' The New York Times. Jan.
22, 2022. Updated Aug. 21, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/us/
politics/democrats-dark-money-donors.html Accessed April 12, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While ``dark money'' is not inherently nefarious, networks like the
pass-through nonprofits under the Arabella Advisors umbrella can cloak
the true source of donations. Arabella Advisors, a for-profit company,
has launched multiple nonprofits, through which it funnels money to
special projects. Those special projects, like the secretive group
Governing for Impact, use their money to influence national policy.
Governing for Impact claimed that the Biden administration acted on
``more than 20'' of its specific recommendations.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Schoffstall, Joe. ``Secretive Soros-funded group works behind
the scenes with Biden admin on policy, documents show.'' Fox News.
April 26, 2022. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/secretive-soros-
funded-group-works-behind-scenes-biden-admin-policy-documents Accessed
April 15, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Arabella network has funneled money to many left-wing groups
that impact the Biden administration, pushing radical agendas that do
not advance America's interests.
The Center for American Progress receives a great deal of money
through the Arabella network. The Hopewell Fund funneled $315,000 into
CAP between 2020 and 2022.\9\ The New Venture Fund poured $2.97 million
into CAP between 2012 and 2021.\10\ The Sixteen Thirty Fund poured
$300,000 into the center between 2014 and 2021, with $250,000 of that
sum earmarked for ``environmental (climate, conservation & energy)
programs.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ ``The Hopewell Fund.'' Form 990 Schedule I for 2020, 2021, and
2022, accessed on April 22, 2024, via ProPublica.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/473681860/
202143169349311614/IRS 990ScheduleI (2020)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/473681860/
202203139349304855/IRS 990ScheduleI (2021)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/473681860/
202333149349300038/IRS 990ScheduleI (2022)
\10\ ``New Venture Fund.'' Form 990 Schedule I for 2012-2021,
accessed on April 22, 2024, via ProPublica. https://
projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/205806345/
2013_12_EO%2F20-5806345_990_201212 (2012)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201413219349306531/IRS 990ScheduleI (2013)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201523209349314357/IRS 990ScheduleI (2014)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201623359349300312/IRS 990ScheduleI (2015)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201723179349305572/IRS 990ScheduleI (2016)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201843169349302864/IRS 990ScheduleI (2017)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201903169349302480/IRS 990ScheduleI (2018)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
202043389349300039/IRS 990ScheduleI (2019)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
202113169349310971/IRS 990ScheduleI (2020)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
202243139349303999/IRS 990ScheduleI (2021)
\11\ ``Sixteen Thirty Fund.'' Form 990 Schedule I for 2014 and
2021, accessed on April 22, 2024, via ProPublica.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/264486735/
201533209349314223/IRS 990ScheduleI (2014)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/264486735/
202243119349300829/IRS 990ScheduleI (2021)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Center for American Progress advocates for ``environmental
justice,'' and praised the administration for advancing ``an
unprecedented climate, clean energy, and environmental justice
agenda.'' \12\ CAP claims that ``long-standing racial and environmental
injustices disproportionately expose communities of color to climate
pollution.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ ``Securing Environmental Justice for All.'' Center for
American Progress report. March 25, 2024. https://
www.americanprogress.org/article/how-the-biden-administration-is-
fighting-for-clean-air-and-water-climate-protection-and-healthy-
communities-for-all/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
\13\ ``Advancing Racial Equity and Justice.'' Center for American
Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/advancing-racial-
equity-and-justice/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
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Meanwhile, the Department of the Interior is directing $2 billion
in funds through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and other laws
President Biden signed.\14\
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\14\ ``America the Beautiful 2023 Annual Report.'' Department of
the Interior. January 2024. https://www.doi.gov/sites/default/files/
documents/2024-01/jan-2024america-beautiful-2023-annual-report508-1.pdf
Accessed April 26, 2024.
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Who determines where those funds go? None other than John Podesta,
former chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign and founder of the Center
for American Progress. Podesta serves as senior advisor to the
president for clean energy innovation and implementation, and he
oversees ``implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act's expansive
clean energy and climate provisions.'' \15\
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\15\ ``President Biden Announces Senior Clean Energy and Climate
Team.'' White House Briefing Room. Sept. 2, 2022. https://
www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/02/
president-biden-announces-senior-clean-energy-and-climate-team/
Accessed April 26, 2024.
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Climate policies like those the Center for American Progress
advances make energy more expensive and drive production outside the
U.S. Ironically, this makes it more likely that other countries, which
do not produce fossil fuels as cleanly as America, will pollute the
environment.\16\
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\16\ ``Report: U.S. Beats Competitors With Low Carbon Intensity
Oil.'' Energy In Depth. June 2, 2023. https://www.energyindepth.org/
report-u-s-beats-competitors-with-low-carbon-intensity-oil/ Accessed
April 26, 2024.
Radical environmental groups have also gotten their staff appointed
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to positions of power in Interior.
Tracy Stone-Manning, Biden's pick to lead the Bureau of Land
Management, faced accusations that she helped eco-terrorists put spikes
in trees in order to cause physical harm to loggers who dared cut them
down. A former prosecutor said he investigated her in 1989 and 1993,
and he described her as ``vulgar, antagonistic, and extremely anti-
government.'' Stone-Manning confessed that she had edited, retyped, and
sent a threatening letter to the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of tree-
spiking eco-terrorists.\17\ Stone-Manning later claimed she ``had no
involvement in the spiking of trees'' and does ``not condone tree
spiking or terrorism of any kind.'' \18\
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\17\ ``Lead Investigator: Tracy Stone-Manning Helped Plan 1989 Tree
Spiking & Was a Target of the Investigation.'' Senate Committee on
Energy & Natural Resources news release. July 15, 2021. https://
www.energy.senate.gov/2021/7/lead-investigator-tracy-stone-manning-
helped-plan-1989-tree-spiking-was-a-target-of-the-investigation
Accessed April 27, 2024.
\18\ Lefebvre, Ben, Anthony Adragna, and Burgess Everett. ``Biden's
BLM pick hit with new allegations from former investigator in tree-
spiking case.'' Politico. July 15, 2021. https://www.politico.com/news/
2021/07/15/biden-blm-pick-allegations-499739 Accessed April 27, 2024.
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Stone-Manning worked for four years at the National Wildlife
Federation, which claims to combat climate change to help wildlife. The
NWF has also advanced climate alarmist predictions that later proved
false.
``The National Wildlife Federation working with federal agency
partners developed an innovative planning approach known as `climate-
smart conservation,' '' the NWF claims on its website.\19\ The National
Park Service, part of Interior, collaborated with the NWF on Climate
Smart Conservation and cited the federation in its materials on the
project.\20\
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\19\ ``Climate-Smart Conservation.'' World Wildlife Federation.
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Climate/Climate-Change/Climate-Smart-
Conservation Accessed April 27, 2024.
\20\ ``Climate Smart Conservation Planning for the National
Parks.'' National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/
climatesmartconservation.htm Accessed April 27, 2024.
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The National Wildlife Federation's close ties to Interior should
not come as a surprise. In 2009, an Interior Department investigation
into the Bureau of Land Management found that BLM was consulting NWF
staff on budgeting, and NWF staff were writing and editing official BLM
materials that promoted the NWF's priorities. An Inspector General
report concluded that National Landscape Conservation System directors
had engaged in inappropriate relationships with advocacy groups
creating ``the potential for conflicts of interest or violations of
law.'' \21\
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\21\ Straub, Noelle. ``BLM employees too cozy with advocacy
groups--IG.'' The New York Times. Oct. 5, 2009. Archived. https://
archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/05/05greenwire-blm-
employees-too-cozy-with-advocacy-groups-ig-20341.html Accessed April
27, 2024.
The Justice Department declined to prosecute in lieu of
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administrative action.
Stone-Manning is not the only former NWF staffer to move to the
Department of the Interior. Laura Daniel-Davis, who served as the chief
of staff at Interior under Obama, worked at the group for three years,
as a vice president for conservation strategy and chief of policy and
advocacy. In late 2020 and into 2021, she worked on climate issues on
the Biden-Harris transition team, landing at Interior in 2021.\22\
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\22\ ``Laura Daniel Davis.'' LinkedIn profile. https://
www.linkedin.com/in/laura-daniel-davis-74168859/ Accessed April 27,
2024.
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Biden nominated Daniel-Davis to serve as assistant secretary of
Interior for land and minerals management in June 2021, but the Senate
Energy Committee deadlocked on her nomination, her nomination timed
out, and Biden renominated her in January 2022. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-
W.Va., announced his opposition to Daniel-Davis on March 10, 2023.
Manchin faulted the nominee for agreeing with a decision that
Manchin said involved the administration ``putting their radical
climate agenda ahead of the needs of the people of Alaska and the
United States.'' The document involved Interior's decision making on an
oil and gas lease sale off the coast of Alaska.\23\
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\23\ Frazin, Rachel. ``Manchin indicates opposition to Biden lands
nominee over internal memo.'' The Hill. March 3, 2023. https://
thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3883311-manchin-jeopardizes-
chances-for-biden-lands-nominee/ Accessed April 27, 2024.
Biden appointed Daniel-Davis acting deputy secretary at Interior in
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October 2023.
``This appointment is yet another example of this administration
disregarding Congress and elevating nominees when they are unable to
get the bipartisan support needed for confirmation,'' Manchin said in
response. ``Their insistence on ignoring the confirmation process to
advance their agenda undermines the role of the Senate and should be
troubling to everyone.'' \24\
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\24\ ``Manchin Statement on Daniel-Davis Being Named Acting Deputy
Secretary at Interior.'' Senator Joe Manchin news release. Oct. 31,
2023. https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-
statement-on-daniel-davis-being-named-acting-deputy-secretary-at-
interior Accessed April 27, 2024.
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The NWF has promoted former Vice President Al Gore's climate
propaganda documentary ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' which predicted that
``there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro'' by 2016. Yet it
continues to snow on the mountain in Tanzania.
The Arabella Network group New Venture Fund sent $800,000 to the
National Wildlife Federation between 2010 and 2016.\25\ The Windward
Fund sent the NWF $100,000 in 2020.\26\
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\25\ ``New Venture Fund.'' Form 990, Schedule I, for 2010-2016,
accessed April 27, 2024, via ProPublica.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/205806345/
2011_11_EO%2F20-5806345_ 990_201012 (2010)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/205806345/
2013_12_EO%2F20-5806345_ 990_201212 (2012)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201413219349306531/IRS 990ScheduleI (marked as 2014)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201523209349314357/IRS 990ScheduleI (2014)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201623359349300312/IRS 990ScheduleI (2015)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/205806345/
201723179349305572/IRS 990ScheduleI (2016)
\26\ ``Windward Fund.'' Form 990, Schedule I for 2020, accessed on
April 27, 2024, via ProPublica. https://projects.propublica.org/
nonprofits/organizations/473522162/2021431693493 11234/IRS990ScheduleI
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Arabella is not the only major ``dark money'' player on the Left.
The Tides Foundation pioneered the Arabella ``fiscal sponsorship''
model, allowing donors to cloak which projects they were funding by
directing funds through a nonprofit.
The Tides Foundation has bankrolled the Southern Poverty Law
Center, a group I wrote a book about in 2020. Between 2018 and 2022,
the Tides Foundation sent the SPLC more than $1 million.\27\ Although
the SPLC has an endowment of $731.9 million, this still represents a
significant investment.\28\
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\27\ The precise figure is $1,038,381. ``Tides Foundation'' Form
990 Schedule I for 2018-2022, accessed April 26, 2024, via ProPublica.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510198509/
201913189349314251/IRS 990ScheduleI (2018)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510198509/
202043149349304239/IRS 990ScheduleI (2019)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510198509/
202133149349300708/IRS 990ScheduleI (2020)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510198509/
202233189349313898/IRS 990ScheduleI (2021)
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/510198509/
202400469349300305/IRS 990ScheduleI (2022)
\28\ ``Financial Information.'' Southern Poverty Law Center.
https://www.splcenter.org/about/financial-information Accessed April
26, 2024.
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The SPLC may have indirectly influenced policy at the Department of
the Interior. The SPLC has become notorious for two major projects: its
``hate map'' where it puts mainstream conservative and Christian
nonprofits on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan; and its efforts
to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces. The SPLC has
demanded the removal of Confederate monuments and celebrated their
removals.\29\
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\29\ ``SPLC Reports 48 Confederate Memorials Removed in 2022.''
Southern Poverty Law Center news release. April 12, 2023. https://
www.splcenter.org/presscenter/splc-reports-48-confederate-memorials-
removed-2022 Accessed April 27, 2024.
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While it makes sense to remove monuments celebrating hateful
Confederates like Nathan Bedford Forrest, who went on to found the Ku
Klux Klan, the SPLC comes in with a sledgehammer when a scalpel is
required. Robert E. Lee, for example, is more complicated. While he
fought for the Confederacy, Lee later helped heal the nation after the
Civil War. The SPLC also published a map plotting Confederate monuments
across the U.S., including elementary and middle schools. The map even
included Stonewall Elementary, in Lexington, Kentucky. The school
wasn't named after ``Stonewall'' Jackson, the Confederate general,
however. It had been named after a literal stone wall. While the SPLC
later apologized and removed the school, the incident highlights the
group's desire to find hate where there isn't any.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\30\ Musgrave, Beth. ``Stonewall Elementary gets an apology. It
wasn't named for Confederate general.'' Lexington Herald-Leader. Oct.
18, 2017. https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/counties/fayette-county/
article179513491.html Accessed April 28, 2024.
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The movement to remove Confederate monuments arguably inspired
vandals with Black Lives Matter to target statues of America's Founding
Fathers. These vandals also targeted a monument celebrating the 54th
Massachusetts regiment, a regiment of black soldiers fighting for the
Union. Vandals spray-painted anti-police messages and ``RIP George
Floyd'' on the monument in 2020.\31\
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\31\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``The Violence Against This Civil War Monument
Captures Just How Badly the George Floyd Riots Have Gone Wrong.'' PJ
Media. June 4, 2020. https://pjmedia.com/tyler-o-neil/2020/06/04/
george-floyd-rioters-deface-civil-war-monument-celebrating-black-union-
patriots-n495913 Accessed April 28, 2024.
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The Southern Poverty Law Center appointed Kimberly A. Probolus-
Cedroni, who received her Ph.D. in American Studies from The George
Washington University, to help with the project ``The Third Edition of
Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy.'' \32\
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\32\ ``Kimberly A. Probolus.'' American Council of Learned
Societies. https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/kimberly-a-probolus/
Accessed April 27, 2024.
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In August 2022, Interior Secretary Haaland named Probolus-Cedroni
to the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, an
``advisory group to help identify and recommend changes to derogatory
terms still in use for places throughout the country.'' \33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\33\ ``Secretary Haaland Announces Members of the Advisory
Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names.'' Department of the
Interior news release. Aug. 9, 2022. https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/
secretary-haaland-announces-members-advisory-committee-reconciliation-
place-names Accessed April 27, 2024.
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The minutes for the committee's meetings on June 14 and June 15,
2023, mention that Probolus-Cedroni, now a public history teacher in
Washington, DC, noted her previous work with the SPLC, ``where she
worked on policies to remove Confederate memorials and monuments.'' The
minutes add, ``She expressed her gratitude for being able to continue
to work toward racial and social justice with the work of the
committee.'' \34\
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\34\ ``Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names Meeting
Minutes, June 14 and 15, 2023.'' National Park Service. https://
www.nps.gov/orgs/1892/upload/June-2023-Meeting-Minutes-2.pdf Accessed
April 27, 2024.
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According to OpenSecrets, the Southern Poverty Law Center
contracted with the lobbying firm NVG, L.L.C. to lobby the Department
of the Interior on ``historic designations.'' \35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\35\ ``Southern Poverty Law Center Is Represented By NVG, LLC.''
ProPublica Lobbying Representation. https://projects.propublica.org/
represent/lobbying/r/301035891 Accessed April 27, 2024.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The SPLC praised Secretary Haaland for including Probolus-Cedroni
on the committee, though the center did not mention her by name.
``We are thrilled with Secretary Deb Haaland's announcement and her
efforts to remove hateful names from public space,'' SPLC Chief of
Staff and Culture Lecia Brooks said in a statement. ``Our Whose
Heritage Project contributes to this effort by mapping and tracking
data on Confederate monuments and memorials--including some on federal
land. We hope the tribal leaders, scholars, and activists on the
committee will use our important resources.''
``Just as no person of color should have to serve on a military
base named after a Confederate, no one should have to visit a national
park whose name is rooted in legacies of hate and white supremacy,''
Brooks continued.\36\
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\36\ ``SPLC Applauds Appointments to Advisory Committee on
Reconciliation in Place Names.'' Southern Poverty Law Center news
release. Aug. 10, 2022. https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/splc-
applauds-appointments-advisory-committee-reconciliation-place-names
Accessed April 27, 2024.
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SPLC has faced harsh criticism for defining ``hate'' broadly. It
publishes a ``hate map'' plotting mainstream conservative and Christian
groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Immigration
Studies, the Federation on American Immigration Reform, and the Center
for Security Policy as ``hate groups'' alongside Klan chapters.\37\
Last year, the SPLC even added parental rights groups like Moms for
Liberty and Parents Defending Education to the ``hate map,'' suggesting
that moms and dads who want a say in their kids' education are the
modern equivalent of men in white hoods burning crosses.\38\
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\37\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the
Southern Poverty Law Center.'' New York: Bombardier Books, 2020. pp.
87-120.
\38\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``Far-Left Group Puts Moms for Liberty on Map
With KKK Chapters.'' The Daily Signal. June 6, 2023. https://
www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/06/breaking-southern-poverty-law-center-
adds-parental-rights-groups-hate-map/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
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In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal
that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came
forward, calling the ``hate'' accusations a ``highly profitable scam.''
\39\
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\39\ Moser, Bob. ``The Reckoning of Morris Dees and the Southern
Poverty Law Center.'' The New Yorker. March 21, 2019. https://
www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-reckoning-of-morris-dees-and-the-
southern-poverty-law-center Accessed April 26, 2024.
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The SPLC has even suggested that the entire Roman Catholic Church
should be considered a ``hate group.'' It cited as evidence of ``hate''
a direct quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the binding
document stating the essential and fundamental content of the Catholic
faith.\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\40\ O'Neil, ``Making Hate Pay.'' p. 108.
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Yet SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged to donors that in the
early days of the Biden administration, federal agencies reached out to
``solicit our expertise'' to ``help shape the policies'' to counter
``the domestic terrorism threat.'' \41\
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\41\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``ORWELLIAN NIGHTMARE: Biden Admin Consulted
Anti-Christian Group for `Domestic Terrorism' Strategy.'' The Daily
Signal. Jan. 11, 2024. https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/11/
exclusive-biden-admin-approached-anti-christian-splc-help-shape-
policies-counter-domestic-terror-threat/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
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That's not just braggadocio--the Justice Department listened to the
SPLC right after it put Moms for Liberty on the ``hate map.'' \42\
Biden appointed an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.\43\ The FBI cited the SPLC in its
notorious memo going after ``radical traditional Catholics.'' \44\
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\42\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``SMOKING GUN: Biden DOJ Took Advice From Group
Demonizing Concerned Parents, Docs Show.'' The Daily Signal. March 7,
2024. https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/07/exclusive-splc-tried-sic-
dojs-hate-crimes-division-moms-liberty/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
\43\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``5 Things to Know About Nancy Abudu, Leftist
SPLC Lawyer Biden Tapped for 11th Circuit.'' The Daily Signal. Feb. 1,
2023. Updated May 18, 2023. https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/02/01/5-
things-know-nancy-abudu-leftist-splc-lawyer-biden-tapped-11th-circuit/
Accessed April 26, 2024.
\44\ O'Neil, Tyler. ``WHISTLEBLOWER DOCS: FBI Cites Southern
Poverty Law Center in Report on `Radical-Traditionalist Catholic
Ideology.' '' The Daily Signal. Feb. 8, 2023. https://
www.dailysignal.com/2023/02/08/whistleblower-docs-fbi-cites-southern-
poverty-law-center-in-report-on-radical-traditionalist-catholic-
ideology/ Accessed April 26, 2024.
This group's overly broad condemnations have no place at the
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Department of the Interior.
Radical environmentalist groups and groups like the SPLC enjoy the
support of a dark money network that helps them influence the Biden
administration, placing staff and leaders into the bureaucracy and
moving the needle on policy in a way that weakens America's energy
sector and energy independence.
______
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. I now want to recognize
Ms. Julia Fay Bernal.
Oh, I forgot, she is not here. How about Mr. Jamie
Williams?
He is not here, either. I find it very, very interesting
that that comes about.
We are now going to go to Members' questions. The gentleman
from Montana is recognized for his 5 minutes.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Congressman Gosar, and
I appreciate you convening this hearing today.
Over the past 3 years, we have observed a disturbing trend
with this Administration, an ever-growing dependence on
extremist organizations to shape policy decisions. The Biden
administration appears to be governed by a fear of upsetting
its most progressive faction. The policies enacted by this
Administration show the significant influence of these
extremist groups. This undue influence leads the Administration
to prioritize appeasing these destructive groups, especially
considering the coming elections.
One area where this external pressure is directly felt is
in our energy and public lands sectors. We have recently
witnessed an attempt by the Administration to pursue the
demands of these groups by advocating for the commoditization
of our public land and resources, disregarding the needs of
local communities and businesses reliant on these lands for
their livelihoods, and in violation of the current statute.
While this scheme was thwarted, the residual effects linger,
exemplified by the recently implemented Conservation and
Landscape Health Rule which flagrantly violates the Taylor
Grazing Act, and the attempts to breach the lower Snake River
dams.
Mr. O'Neil, I really appreciate your comments and your
insight as to what has been taking place. It is widely
acknowledged that the United States produces some of the
cleanest oil and gas globally, using the most environmentally
sound practices. Despite this, Secretary Haaland and the
current Administration persist in bragging about their
reduction in lease sales.
Given this Administration's purported focus on climate
issues, how do you explain their desire to increase our
dependence on comparatively dirtier foreign sources of oil and
gas which is produced with little or no care for the
environment?
Mr. O'Neil. Yes, I think it is directly contrary. The more
that we outsource the drilling of oil and gas, the worse it is
for the global environment. Those who really care about climate
change on a global level should be concerned about this.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Walter, when we talk about the far-left
environmental activism, there are two individual names that
frequently come up: George Soros and Hansjorg Wyss. Mr. Walter,
can you talk about these two men and why they have taken an
interest in the policy area?
Mr. Walter. Well, Mr. Wyss probably deserves more attention
because he is far less well known. He has given roughly a half
billion dollars as a foreign national to American non-profits
that engage in politics and public policy debate, including
(c)(4)'s that give money to SuperPACs, which he, of course, is
not allowed to do.
If you go to the FEC database, you can also see that he
made direct political contributions to multiple members of the
Democratic Party in Congress. Unfortunately, that wasn't
discovered until the statute of limitations had expired.
So, he continues to give hundreds of millions of dollars to
the Arabella Network. In fact, he was probably the original
sugar daddy when the Arabella Network was just getting started
in the 2000s. He has had an FEC complaint lodged against him
and his Arabella compatriots. The FEC, unfortunately, did
nothing about it, as it usually does. But the general counsel
at the FEC urged that both Arabella and he be sanctioned.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Walter, do you have any insights on
their end goals when influencing public policy, but most
specifically in the natural resource space?
Mr. Walter. Well, Arabella has said that roughly one-third
of its work in its network is in the environmental space. And
Mr. Wyss especially has done that. As I said, he is on the
board, as is his dark money group's president of the Wilderness
Society.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would yield back the balance of my
time and wait for the second round.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from New
Mexico is recognized for her 5 minutes.
Ms. Stansbury. I will wait until the end.
Dr. Gosar. OK. I recognize the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Painter, in July 2021, before the cancellation of the
Twin Metals leases, senior DOI officials met off the books with
the Wilderness Society, one of the lead plaintiffs in the
lawsuit against the project, and they concealed the purpose of
the meeting. Later, Interior canceled the leases, despite
ongoing litigation.
Last year, you testified before the Senate Budget Committee
and in written testimony criticized the fossil fuel industry
for having backdoor access to Federal Governments, stating,
``Fossil fuel companies also take advantage of the revolving
door in and out of government. There they are allowed to
participate in regulatory matters that affect their former
employers' industry.'' With your condemnation of the fossil
fuel industry allegedly using backroom channels of political
appointments and relationships to influence policy, do you
similarly condemn the Wilderness Society for using backroom
tactics to lobby against the Twin Metals mining project?
Mr. Painter. My understanding of the law is that these
backroom conversations with previous employers have been
allowed for a long time with respect to regulatory matters. The
ethics pledge constrains some of that, not enough. We need to
see a tightening up of the ethics rules. This was a serious
problem under the Bush administration, it was a serious problem
under the Clinton and the Reagan administrations. It is a
problem today.
Mr. Collins. So, that means you are similarly condemning
the----
Mr. Painter. I will condemn illegal communications. This is
legal, and I will tell you where it is illegal. It is illegal
when there is a communication between a Federal official and
their former employer about a particular party matter within--
--
Mr. Collins. That leads into it. Do you believe that non-
profits like the Wilderness Society should be allowed to guide
natural resource policy, instead of the professionals at the
Bureau of Land Management?
Mr. Painter. I don't understand your question. Should they
be giving their input? Yes, they should. They should be doing
it legally.
Mr. Collins. Yes, but they are----
Mr. Painter. I believe the rules need to be tightened up
for the Wilderness Society, as well as for the oil and gas
industry. We have had too much of this revolving door access to
the Interior Department.
Mr. Collins. Well, what do you believe? Do you believe it
is a more appropriate working relationship between non-profits
and the Federal Government than we have observed here? Do you
think there is more?
Mr. Painter. I believe that the Federal Government needs to
tighten up their ethics rules so we do not have Federal
officials discussing regulations with their previous employer,
whether the previous employer is the oil and gas industry or
the Wilderness Society, there has been way too much of that. We
need tighter regulations. That is the point I have made in
front of the U.S. Senate last year and I am making today.
Mr. Collins. On June 9, 2019, you tweeted, ``Sulfide mining
companies controlled by foreign billionaires descend on the
Great Lakes at Real Donald Trump and his allies, and
Minnesota's most corrupt DFL politicians have shown them the
way. Vote for clean water. Vote them out.''
With your stated opposition to foreign billionaires
influencing our natural resources policy, will you condemn all
initiatives and projects that are funded by the Hansjorg Wyss,
a foreign national who funds environmental groups such as the
League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, as being influenced
by foreign billionaires?
Mr. Painter. I don't like foreign billionaires involved in
American non-profits at all. I have condemned the influence on
American universities from Qatar and other countries that seek
to drive our universities toward anti-Semitism.
Mr. Collins. I am going to take that as a yes.
Mr. Painter. This is a serious problem. I do condemn it.
But is your job in Congress to take action to pass laws, rather
than play partisan games attacking the other party and simply
trying to win an election, and then 2 more years of the same.
Mr. Collins. I am running out of precious time.
Mr. O'Neil, how do the goals of our foreign adversaries
align with the goals of radical environmental non-profits
regarding natural resources and environmental policy?
Mr. O'Neil. Well, there is serious concern about, as the
United States moves away from focusing on drilling oil and gas,
that other countries, specifically Russia, will be able to
influence more of the market by producing their own oil and
gas. This is a national security concern, as well as an
economic concern for American taxpayers.
Mr. Collins. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I was just on the coast in Louisiana last
week. We were out on the oil platform. The Gulf of Mexico can
produce 15 percent of this nation's energy right now, today.
Also, they do it 80 percent more efficient than our adversaries
across the world do it in the Middle East.
We have an America-last policy. You are exactly right, Mr.
O'Neil. America-last policy. And we have three leases that are
supposed to be going off annually here. We didn't get them last
year.
They have sat right over there in that witness stand and
said they weren't going to do any this year or any next year.
And on top of that, LNG, you are exactly right. We have an LNG
company down there right now on the coast of Louisiana that is
almost ready to export LNG, but they can't get the permits
finished from this Administration. Why? Because they would
rather us buy our gas and oil from our adversaries who are out
there funding people that want to kill us. And we also have
Europe over there that is going to be forced to buy LNG from
Russia because we won't fund or at least permit private
companies in this country to export LNG.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman. The gentlelady from New
Mexico is recognized for her 5 minutes.
Ms. Stansbury. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I
just want to clarify a few things.
Mr. Walter, I actually really appreciate the comment you
made at the beginning of your testimony about having an honest
conversation with differing opinions. That is exactly what
public discourse needs to be. So, I very much appreciate that.
But I also think it is important to be clear on what
perspectives people are representing when they are in front of
us in the public discourse.
Mr. O'Neil, I do appreciate you being here today, and I
respect that you are bringing your perspective on these issues.
I know in your opening statement that you submitted to the
Committee that you stated you are here in your personal
capacity, which I appreciate. But I just want to clarify. You
are employed by the Daily Signal, correct?
Mr. O'Neil. I am, correct.
Ms. Stansbury. And the Daily Signal is a publication of the
Heritage Foundation. Correct?
Mr. O'Neil. Yes.
Ms. Stansbury. And that is why your bio appears on the
Heritage Foundation.
And I just want to be clear. The Heritage Foundation is a
conservative think tank that many of us know. And among other
things, it supports both 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) activities,
including engaging and influencing both policy and politics. It
gives donations to conservative candidates like Donald Trump.
And on the (c)(3) side, it is currently engaged in an effort
called Project 2025, which is laying the groundwork for a White
House more friendly to the right. That is actually what it says
on the website.
Mr. Walter, you are here in your capacity working for an
organization called the Capital Research Center, which was
founded also by a former Senior Vice President for the Heritage
Foundation. And I find it ironic that our two Majority
witnesses are both here and affiliated with these conservative
organizations that are, of course, funded by many different
sources, but among the donors include the Koch brothers, the
Bradleys, the Mercer family, and a donor-advised fund called
the Donors Trust, which is bankrolled largely by the Koch
brothers and the Searle Foundation, which, among other things,
has funded work to weaken child labor laws, gut voting rights
across the country, to try to gut affirmative action policies,
to push climate denialism, and also help to prepare for a Trump
administration in a second term.
So, while I do appreciate that we have different points of
view represented here in front of the Committee today, I think
it is bizarre to talk about the influence of dark money on
policy without identifying that we actually have two great
examples here in front of us today.
Mr. Painter, we appreciate you traveling from Minnesota to
come be with us today and your advocacy on behalf of your
community. You are a former Bush administration official. Thank
you for your service, especially around ethics issues.
And you mentioned in your testimony that you came to the
White House during the height of the Jack Abramoff scandal,
during which Mr. Abramoff defrauded American Indian tribes of
millions of dollars and was involved in an influence-peddling
scheme at the Department of the Interior. And I noted during
your testimony that you said that the Department of the
Interior was certainly not one of your shining examples of
ethical behavior during your tenure in the White House.
So, I just want to kind of go back over the record a little
bit. It is true that during that time the then-Secretary Gale
Norton was investigated for sharing insider information with
Shell Oil. And that matter was referred to the Department of
Justice. Correct?
Mr. Painter. I believe so, though no charges were filed.
Yes.
Ms. Stansbury. And it was also during that time that the
Minerals Management Service, which was what BOEM was, which
manages offshore oil and gas drilling, was found to have many,
many ethics violations. And, in fact, employees at the time
were steering contracts, taking thousands of dollars in gifts.
They were allowing royalty underpayments by oil companies, and
essentially engaged in a culture of giveaways and unethical
behavior which ultimately led to a complete reorganization of
the mineral management organization. Correct?
Mr. Painter. This is true, and I read the Inspector
General's report, and it cost millions of dollars to conduct
that investigation. Unfortunately, the whole area there was a
disaster zone: the drug use, the sex with oil company
executives. My favorite line in the report being that a sexual
relationship of a Federal employee with an oil company official
is, by definition, not an arm's length relationship.
Ms. Stansbury. Right. So, how do we stop this? We have seen
the same kinds of abuses during the Trump administration. What
should this Committee and what should Congress be doing to stop
this kind of unethical behavior?
Mr. Painter. We need to tighten up the ethics rules with
respect to interaction with previous employers, whether those
previous employers are in the oil and gas industry or in
environmental groups, even though the vast majority of the
corruption has been from the industry side.
Previous employers have far more influence on Federal
agency than other people, and that should be prohibited across
the board in the Federal Government. But the impact of previous
employers influencing the Interior Department has been
egregious.
And we need to cut back on gifts and all the shindigs, the
free flights, the people flying on these airplanes, private
jets, and then saying, well, I just flew on an empty seat, it
was an empty seat, so I didn't get any gift from the oil
company. I had to have that argument over and over again in the
Bush White House. We need to cut out this nonsense, where
Interior Department and other Federal officials are hobnobbing
with outside special interests.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it.
I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Painter, do you believe that all NGOs should have to
disclose who donates to them if they take Federal dollars?
Mr. Painter. Well, I certainly think the foreign donors
need to be disclosed.
Dr. Gosar. Why wouldn't we do it all across the board? I
mean, because that shows, you brought up the oil companies. It
definitely shows us who is playing in the game here.
Mr. Painter. That is the problem. If you start to require
all non-profits to disclose their donors, you are going to run
into some serious opposition from particularly conservative
groups. And, indeed, First Amendment issues have been litigated
in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
But I do believe that foreign donors can be required to be
disclosed. I have pushed very aggressively to require the
disclosure of foreign donors to American universities, where I
believe they are doing a great deal of damage, and we can
require that in other sectors, as well.
But across-the-board disclosure of all donors to all NGOs,
requiring that type of disclosure does run into First Amendment
issues. And you are going to find a lot of the conservative
groups are going to be most concerned about that, so----
Dr. Gosar. I am one of those conservatives. I guess my
question is, then, how do you get to those if you get a foreign
donor that runs their money through an NGO?
Mr. Painter. This is a serious problem. We need to think
about the balance between the First Amendment right to petition
the government for redress of grievances and the need to
disclose funding sources. I am just saying it is a complex
issue.
Dr. Gosar. I agree.
Mr. Painter. And the minute we talk about requiring
disclosure of donors, we are going to get into a lot of
arguments, particularly with the non-profits on the
conservative side.
And I understand there are concerns under the First
Amendment, but I believe that Congress needs to look seriously
at the need for more disclosure of foreign funding sources. I
have called once again on the Department of Education to
require our universities to disclose the money they are getting
from Qatar and all sorts of places all over the world, China. A
lot of those existing regulations aren't even being complied
with.
Now, I know that is not within the jurisdiction of this
Committee, but I am simply saying this is a difficult issue
because if you expand disclosure requirements you run into
First Amendment arguments.
Dr. Gosar. I agree with you. But my question to you is,
they are doing an elective procedure so they are taking money
from the Federal Government. So, that is an elective aspect.
They can choose not to take that money from the Federal
Government, and they would still have to disclose, would they
not?
Mr. Painter. I believe you can condition Federal money on
disclosure of foreign funding sources, and that is what we have
been doing with the universities if the Department of Education
would enforce their regulations with respect to disclosure.
If an organization does not receive Federal dollars, we
could argue you should still require disclosure because it is a
tax-exempt status, and it is a subsidy from the American people
through the 501(c)(3) status. But once again, you are going to
run into very challenging First Amendment issues as you debate
that. And a lot of the opposition to more disclosure is going
to come from the more conservative side of the political
spectrum.
Dr. Gosar. Well, just the fact that we are having this
dialogue tells me all I need to know, that we have to have that
conversation because that is a fine, fine line.
I guess my other question to you is, do you understand
Minnesota, the northeast Twin Metals area? When you look back
at that situation, do you think that the forefathers that
actually did this buffer area weren't thinking outside the box?
Mr. Painter. Which provision are you----
Dr. Gosar. I am talking about where they established a
buffer area within the Superior National Forest.
Mr. Painter. Yes.
Dr. Gosar. That is different than anywhere else at the time
for a reason, to make sure that there was no contamination in
groundwater or whatever. Are you not familiar with that?
Mr. Painter. I am, and it makes a lot of sense.
Dr. Gosar. It does, it makes tons of sense, and
particularly when you take in the vantage point of what is
going on with the new technology for smelting, extracting these
minerals. It is much more efficient, a lot less water,
recoverable, and a lot less pollution. So, I mean, I think you
might want to retake a look at that.
Now, are you familiar why we have foreign investors in our
mining? Do you understand that?
Mr. Painter. I am well aware of why Glencore wants to mine
in northern Minnesota, just like they have been mining all over
the world. But Glencore has been corrupting governments all
over the world, and we are not going to let them do it in
Minnesota.
Dr. Gosar. Well, here is the deal. Part of our problem is
we have eliminated all the American mining because you can't
hold sole holdings in America because it takes so long for
permitting processes to go forward. That is our big crux here.
Are you familiar with Resolution Copper?
Mr. Painter. Yes, but your point is that the permit is
going to be the same, whether it is an American or a foreign
agent, and I have indeed said that we need to get these foreign
mining companies out of Minnesota. They are not honest. They
are not being honest with the Minnesota Government, they are
not being honest with the Department of the Interior. This is
the problem we have. We have dishonest people who want to get
in the mining business.
Dr. Gosar. I will tell you, recapturing my time here, I
disagree. I agree there are some bad actors. But one of the
things that I have done with Resolution Copper, I have been
intense about it, saying, listen, I want nothing, nobody gets
anything out of this. But you show the people what you are
going to give. So, if you are giving water to them beforehand,
you want to show them water you can drink afterwards, and show
them all the studies.
The problem for them is these American miners don't have
the ability to hold on to these vast leases to wait 20-some
years. These multi-nationals actually could mine in Australia,
can mine in Canada. But when it comes to the United States,
well, Resolution Copper hasn't produced an ounce of copper, and
it has been now almost 25, 30 years. There has to be an impasse
here where we have to do something.
Mr. Painter. I would just say we have plenty of
billionaires in America who can take care of responsible
mining. We don't need Glencore coming in here and then cutting
deals with Vladimir Putin and getting the Medal of Friendship
from Vladimir Putin. We are not going to mine northern
Minnesota, tear apart our Boundary Waters so we could provide
copper and nickel for the Russians.
Dr. Gosar. Well, we will have some more conversation. We
are going to go to our Round 2. I recognize the gentleman from
Montana for his second round of questions.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I find it
interesting that we have all these conversations about who the
witnesses are and the organizations that they represent and/or
work for.
One thing I am glad to see is at least they are all
domestic. At least I know that these organizations have the
best interests of America as their main mission and goal,
whereas the other groups that are funding a lot of the
opposition to keep us from developing our natural resources are
not domestic. They do not have our best interests at heart. And
that is where the big conflict begins.
The other thing that I find very interesting as we talk
about making sure that the public lands are not only preserved
and protected, but that they are utilized, and when they are
utilized, to make sure that a fair amount of that revenue that
is generated because of the development of whatever resources
they are, that it actually goes back to benefit the taxpayers
across this country.
Meanwhile, within the last 30 days, I watched this
Committee lease a piece of public land, Federal public land,
park land that RFK Stadium currently sits on in Washington, DC
for $1, and they are going to be able to have that completely
developed, 160 acres right here in Washington, DC, and collect
all of the revenue that it generates without having to pay a
penny of it except, of course, that $1 in their lease
agreement. The rest of the revenue will be retained by
Washington, DC.
So, as we say in Montana, it just depends on whose ox is
getting gored before they make decisions about where the
priority of revenue and the maintenance of properties comes
from or goes to.
Mr. Walter, in January 2022 the Bureau of Land Management
announced a proposed rule to allow for the withdrawal of land
within a 10-mile radius from mineral development within the
Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Secretary Haaland has
long advocated for withdrawing the land from the historical
park from mineral use. Her family, including her adult child,
also continued to do so, including going so far as to make a
documentary about the need for this decision which has screened
at the Capitol Visitor Center.
Despite DOI's own ethics office determination that this
could constitute a conflict of interest, Secretary Haaland
reportedly stated that no reasonable person would question her
impartiality. So, Mr. Walter, my question to you is, do you
believe, as a reasonable person, that this might constitute a
conflict of interest for the Secretary?
Mr. Walter. Congressman, I don't think that passes the
laugh test. No.
Mr. Rosendale. How do you think a conflict of interest like
this by the Secretary should be handled in this situation?
Mr. Walter. Well, all of the proper ethics requirements
which my colleague here, Mr. Painter, has discussed need to be
respected.
And, of course, in this case one of the problems was that
she got to be a judge in her own cause, right? She was the one
who was given the decision to say whether what she was doing
was fine. And, again, ordinary Americans would not understand
that as true ethical decision-making.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Painter, you have been pretty outspoken
against some of the things that the Republicans have been
doing. Does this pass your smell test?
Mr. Painter. I don't believe this is a partisan issue. If
the ethics lawyer gives advice, I would expect it to be
followed. I am a former government ethics lawyer, and it is not
up for the Department head to decide whether the Department
head is biased or not or should recuse. If the ethics lawyer
says you should recuse, you recuse. I don't care if you are a
Democrat or Republican or an Independent.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Walter, can you tell us about the Pueblo
Action Alliance?
Mr. Walter. Well, as I tried to outline in my testimony, it
is hard to find anybody who would be more perfectly fitting the
description of radical and extremist and, again, so radical and
extreme that they are willing to ally themselves with communist
dictatorships and the like. It is off the charts.
Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Walter, I am getting ready to run out of
time here. Has Secretary Haaland's family been involved in that
organization? And did the Secretary herself have any role in
its creation?
Mr. Walter. I am not certain about the role in the
creation, but her adult child is one of its leaders. And in my
written testimony especially I documented all these
connections.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much, Mr. Walter.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentleman from Montana. The
gentlelady from New Mexico is recognized for her 5 minutes.
Ms. Stansbury. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to make sure that folks out there understand
that the matter that was just brought forward about potential
conflicts of interest was actually an inquiry that was sent by
the Majority to the Solicitor's Office which houses the ethics
lawyer for the Department of the Interior and which is
independent of the Administration. And there are two responses
here from the Department of the Interior, one from August 9,
2023 and one from February 2024, which provides the ethics
lawyer's findings, and found that there is no conflict of
interest.
I appreciate, Mr. Painter, your comments about following
what the ethics lawyers actually say.
Secondly, I want to talk for a moment about Chaco Canyon.
Chaco Canyon is a sacred site. There are dozens of tribes in
New Mexico who have been working for decades to have the
greater Chaco Canyon area protected because it is part of their
ancestral history. It is a place where the Pueblo and Navajo
Dine people have gone for countless generations to pray, to
meet, to trade, and in the past have lived. The reason why the
people of New Mexico and Arizona and the surrounding tribal
communities have been working for countless decades to protect
that site from oil and gas drilling is because it is core to
their spirituality, their identity, and the future of the
people of that land.
When Secretary Haaland came into office, there were already
decades, decades of efforts that had been undertaken to protect
those lands. There were countless Members of Congress who had
introduced legislation to protect those lands. There were other
efforts by other administrations to try to set them aside. In
fact, as this Committee knows well, this goes back all the way
to the beginning of the 20th century, because those lands are
so significant culturally for our communities.
So, this doesn't represent some vast conspiracy theory.
This is about protecting tribal sacred sites that are critical
to our communities.
Now, I am happy to talk about ethics violations. And I will
go back to the ethics violations of the Trump administration
and what we saw during the tenure of the two officials who were
serving in the Secretary's role re-assigning career employees
they didn't like; threatening Senators; stacking advisory
committees with fossil fuel industry executives; killing
science they didn't like; using taxpayer money to do favors for
their buddies; compounding investigations; using taxpayer funds
for political efforts, inappropriately demanding privileged
access to market-moving oil and gas data, which was
unprecedented; rewriting climate science over the protest of
the authors; using office to advance land deals in their home
towns; trying to fire an Inspector General who was
investigating these matters.
There is a fundamental difference between having
differences of opinion over policy and what direction an agency
should take, and legally binding ethics laws about what those
in power do with those positions of power, what access they
permit, and influence peddling. There are countless efforts of
influence peddling that were investigated over the Trump and
Bush administrations, and I think it is crucial that we address
these issues through changes in the law to ensure that they
never happen again.
And I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentlelady. I just want to remind
everybody the accusations are one thing. Actual convictions are
another.
Ms. Stansbury. Well, we can clarify the----
Dr. Gosar. We are innocent until proven guilty.
Ms. Stansbury. We can clarify the Inspector General's
reports for you so you can see the evidence for yourself.
Dr. Gosar. Well, OK, I will give you something else. That
is evidence. Once again, it has to go to a peer-reviewed body.
It has to go to a jury of our peers for going through that. So,
I mean, from that standpoint, I have to tell you, none of this
has met fruition for one reason or another.
Ms. Stansbury. Actually, there were multiple criminal
referrals during the Trump administration.
Dr. Gosar. Criminal referrals? Once again, where is the due
process? What happened? Nothing came about to them.
I will give you another example. Do you expect the DOJ to
do everything? Tell me about the anti-collusion aspect in
regards to the DOJ implementing a law that I had passed, the
second-to-last one Trump actually signed, and to this day has
not been implemented on anti-trust collusion in regards to
medical insurance industries. Wow, that is pretty stark.
Mr. Walter, yesterday the Daily Caller published a story
complete with the links to e-mails discussing how a senior
adviser at BOEM sought the advice of the Natural Resources
Defense Council and the Ocean Conservancy when attempting to
figure out a legal justification for BOEM to incentivize
developers to invest in underserved communities as part of the
Biden administration's Justice40 agenda. When they could not
provide a sufficient legal opinion, she continued to reach out
to other activist groups for a legal strategy, rather than the
Solicitor's Office at the DOI.
Now, I do think it is fair to say that every presidential
administration should set its own agenda. I understand that.
This is normal and to be expected. However, senior-level agency
officials leaning on outside activist groups while in office
for a legal strategy to implement the administration's
priorities is not a generally accepted practice, I would
assume. Is it?
Mr. Walter. No. Obviously, you would normally go to your
own experts. And if it is a legal matter, you could also, of
course, go to the DOJ's appropriate section.
Dr. Gosar. Why do you think BOEM initially sought illegal
advice from the environmental and activist groups?
Mr. Walter. Well, it is obvious, actually, in the e-mails
themselves with those other groups. They did not have a leg to
stand on legally, and the outside groups admitted that, and
said, ``You are coming to us because you can't invent any legal
leg to stand on for the policy you are trying to push here.''
Dr. Gosar. Now, additionally, back in February 2021, NRDC
emailed an exhaustive list of recommendations to BOEM for
developing their offshore wind leasing program. Many of these
recommendations are now implemented, such as in BOEM's North
Atlantic Right Whale Offshore Wind Strategy, which included the
NRDC's recommendations for avoiding leasing in areas that could
impact the right whale and setting noise limits during
construction to address potential impacts on marine life.
Mr. O'Neil, what do you think of these documented close
relationships between these activist groups and BOEM, and the
potential for improper influence on the development of their
offshore wind leasing programs?
Mr. O'Neil. There is an extreme potential for improper
influence. And what we have seen over and over again in this
case in particular, as well, is this sue-and-settle strategy,
where an activist group that shares the broad policy
preferences of the administration sues an administrative agency
for a change in the law, claiming that there is a legal
requirement. And then what the agency ends up doing is settling
that lawsuit, agreeing to implement the legal requirement while
circumventing the natural requirements of the Administrative
Procedure Act and the notice and comment period.
And we have seen this happen over and over again. The Biden
administration has just ratcheted it up. And the example with
BOEM is a No. 1 example of that.
Dr. Gosar. So, do you think that BOEM allowed the oil and
gas industry a similarly high level of input to guide the
development of the 2024 or 2029 oil and gas leasing program,
which only scheduled three potential oil and gas leases under
sales in the Gulf of Mexico program area?
Mr. O'Neil. You are joking, right?
Dr. Gosar. Right.
Mr. O'Neil. Well, of course, the oil and gas industry does
not have this kind of access. And we have seen where the access
is in the Biden administration. It is all of these radical,
left-wing groups funded by dark money that have a bone to pick
against oil and gas as an industry overall, because they are
following this climate alarmist agenda that believes that if
you burn one drop of oil you are going to bring about the end
of the world.
Meanwhile, we have seen over decades all of the climate
alarmist predictions fail to come to pass. The Maldives have
yet to sink beneath the waves. Kilimanjaro has yet to lose all
of the snow that Al Gore predicted would be gone by 2020. So,
this agenda yet is influencing the administrative state in ways
that go around Congress, in ways that allow the administration
to implement its agenda without these checks that have been
created by the law.
And meanwhile, the Ranking Member brought up Project 2025.
I just want to set the record straight. Project 2025, and I am
not here as a representative of Heritage, or the Daily Signal,
or Project 2025, but what Project 2025 is trying to do is
trying to make the administrative state more accountable to the
American people who elect a president every 4 years. When a
Republican president enters office, the administrative state is
so wedded to these left-wing groups and this left-wing agenda
that the people's elected president is unable to fulfill his
promises to the American people. And that is what Project 2025
is focused on.
Dr. Gosar. My time is expired. We are going to go to a
third round, and I recognize the gentleman from Montana for his
questions.
Mr. Rosendale. I am going to go back to Mr. Painter because
we are getting some breath of bipartisan condemnation from you.
I understand that you share similar concerns as the
Committee regarding foreign actors and dark money seeking to
influence Federal policy. Do you believe there is an effort by
foreign governments to exert influence over public lands and
natural resource policy here in our country?
Mr. Painter. I am sure there is an attempt by foreign
governments to exercise influence. As I mentioned, President
Vladimir Putin gave the Presidential Medal of Friendship to the
Chief Executive Officer of Glencore Corporation in 2017, just
as they were trying to petition for----
Mr. Rosendale. Let me ask you this. I understand you have
this fixation with Vladimir Putin, and I am sorry about that.
But what I am trying to identify is, while there may be foreign
entities that are trying to develop the resources here, what
about the foreign entities that are trying to keep us from
developing our natural resources?
Mr. Painter. I am sure they are going to be active in that
space, as well.
Mr. Rosendale. OK, I am glad you say that. Now, let me ask
you this. Do you feel that the United States, with the
oversight that we provide through the different agencies that
we have, is able to develop our domestic resources cleaner and
with better labor standards than other countries?
Mr. Painter. If we decide what our own rules are going to
be. But we have more and more farmland in America owned by the
Chinese----
Mr. Rosendale. Excuse me, do you believe, based upon what
is actually taking place, not theory, what is actually taking
place in the development of our resources, that we do a better
job as far as protecting the environment and taking care of our
workers than the development of those exact same resources
overseas?
Mr. Painter. Not necessarily. If we don't fix our campaign
finances----
Mr. Rosendale. Would you please then cite to me some place
that is doing a better job than one of the coal mines that I
have visited in the Montana coal strip, where we have not only
the safest development of those resources, but also reclamation
efforts that actually can scientifically, quantitatively prove
that the land is more productive after it has been reclaimed
than it was before they extracted the resources? So, could you
refer to me, cite something that is doing this----
Mr. Painter. I am citing you to the repeated work I and
many others have done about the corruption of our campaign
finances----
Mr. Rosendale. OK, so where is this country that is doing a
better job of developing the resources and protecting the
environment and the workers than we are?
Mr. Painter. They will do a----
Mr. Rosendale. Where is this----
Mr. Painter. Countries such as China----
Mr. Rosendale. Where is this country, sir?
Mr. Painter. I am trying to explain this to you. If we
don't fix our campaign finance system and our ethics rules----
Mr. Rosendale. I understand geography. Please explain to me
the geography of a country that is doing a better job of
developing natural resources and protecting the environment and
the people that are developing those resources----
Mr. Painter. That is not the----
Mr. Rosendale. Could you please cite that country?
Mr. Painter. That is not the point. What I am saying is we
are going to have----
Mr. Rosendale. Well, then, I have no further questions for
you.
Mr. Painter [continuing]. Foreign countries dominating our
country.
Mr. Rosendale. That is the point. What you are trying to do
is allow foreign countries to control the development of the
resources here in our country when they are being developed
more scientifically, sound, environmentally safe, and with
better labor conditions than any other country on Earth. And
meanwhile, you cannot cite to me another country that does a
better job.
I am moving on. I am----
Mr. Painter. You are not moving on because you are not
fixing the corrupt----
Mr. Rosendale [continuing]. Reclaiming my time. Sir, I am
reclaiming my time.
Mr. Painter [continuing]. Campaign finance system.
Mr. Rosendale. Sir, I am reclaiming my time.
Mr. Walter, I would like to go back and spend a little bit
of time on Secretary Haaland, because we hear about all the
accusations. We hear about all the complaints that were filed.
Look, you can file a lawsuit or a complaint against anybody in
this nation at any time. What counts is convictions. And,
again, we are in this country still innocent until proven
guilty.
But when you are running one of these agencies, and we have
had Secretary Haaland before us many, many times, it is as much
about the perception of a conflict of interest as it is an
actual conviction by the Ethics Committee. I would like to go
back to this Pueblo Action Alliance. In what ways are you aware
that this organization has been influencing the actions and the
decisions made by the Department of the Interior?
Mr. Walter. Congressman, thank you for the question.
As I said in my testimony, and the written version has more
examples, I investigated the various things that you and your
colleagues have written in your letters to the Department
repeatedly with your concerns about Pueblo and the Secretary,
and Pueblo and the rest of the Department. And I think those
are very well documented.
And the other thing I would say real quick is that it is
worth noting that all the accusations of the previous
administration, those accusations were made by multiple groups
popped into existence by the Arabella Advisors Network.
Mr. Rosendale. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. The gentlelady from New Mexico is recognized for
her 5 minutes.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, these
hearings are always a very interesting fever dream, but I am
hoping that we can bring it to a conclusion soon.
First of all, I want to clarify how internal ethics
investigations work at an agency. We have a former ethics
attorney from the White House who worked during the Bush
administration. These matters are generally investigated by an
independent body within the agencies called the Office of the
Inspector General. We created these after the Nixon
administration because our agencies were engaged in
unprecedented activities which raised ethical concerns.
And one of the ways in which we tried to restore trust in
American institutions was by creating independent investigative
bodies that would look at ethics violations and then refer them
to attorneys at the Department of Justice in order for them to
be prosecuted.
So, I appreciate the comments that were made. However, that
is not how ethics investigations actually occur. So, to that
end, I would like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record an extensive analysis by Walter Shaub, formerly of the
Office of Government Ethics, which shows without a doubt that
the GOP's allegations against Secretary Haaland and these
attempts to slander her and her family are without merit and
evidence.
Dr. Gosar. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information follows:]
Statement for the Record
WALTER M. SHAUB, JR.
Chairman Gosar and Ranking Member Stansbury, I offer the following
statement for the record to aid the subcommittee in its consideration
of legal issues pertaining to government ethics requirements for
federal executive branch employees. I served in the U.S. Office of
Government Ethics (OGE) for nearly 14 years, as a staff attorney,
program manager, Deputy General Counsel, and the office's Senate-
confirmed Director. Based on this background and my continuing advocacy
for government ethics and accountability, I can offer insights into
issues you are considering in the above-captioned hearing.
The subcommittee's hearing notice expresses concerns about the
applicability of government ethics requirements to what it
characterizes as the ``relationships'' of officials in the U.S.
Department of the Interior with nonprofit organizations.\1\ The notice,
however, reveals a misunderstanding of the applicable legal
authorities.
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\1\ Memorandum from Michelle Lane and Lucas Drill to Subcomm. on
Oversight & Investigations Republican Members, H. Comm. on Natural Res.
(Apr. 30, 2024), https://tinyurl.com/mtcv9cd9.
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To address the subcommittee's apparent misunderstanding, this
statement discusses requirements of the primary conflict of interest
statute applicable to executive branch employees, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208;
OGE's impartiality regulation, 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502; the Ethics
Pledge that President Joe Biden has required his appointees to sign
under an executive order pertaining to ``Ethics Commitments by
Executive Branch Personnel,'' Executive Order 13989, Section 1; and
OGE's general appearance standard 5 C.F.R. 2635.101(b)(14). This
statement then applies these legal authorities to 12 case studies
raised in, or suggested by, the hearing notice and correspondence that
members of the committee have sent the Department of the Interior.\2\
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\2\ To avoid confusion, I have numbered these 12 case studies
serially.
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THE CONFLICT OF INTEREST LAW
As a starting point, it important to understand a few key points
about the primary conflict of interest law applicable to the executive
branch, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208. That law is explicit regarding its coverage
and applicability.
Basic Restriction
The conflict of interest law prohibits an executive branch employee
from participating personally and substantially in a ``particular
matter'' if the employee knows that the particular matter will directly
and predictably affect the employee's financial interests or those of
any person whose financial interests are imputed to the employee,
unless the employee first obtains a waiver.\3\
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\3\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a). The language ''directly and
predictably'' does not appear in the statute but has been understood to
be inherent in the language ``particular matter in which . . . he . . .
has a financial interest'' since the law was enacted over six decades
ago. 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.402. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alita
provided the Interior Department with guidance explaining this language
when he was serving in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal
Counsel. Memorandum from Samuel Alita, Dep'y Asst. Atty. Gen., Off. of
Legal Counsel, Dep't of Justice, to Solicitor of the Interior, Scope of
the Term ``Particular Matter'' Under 18 U.S.C. 208 (Jan. 12, 1987),
https://tinyurl.com/2p8xftum.
The phrase ``particular matter'' is a legal term of art. Restating
the long-standing consensus as to the term's meaning, OGE has provided
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the following definition in its regulations:
The term ``particular matter'' includes only matters that
involve deliberation, decision, or action that is focused upon
the interests of specific persons, or a discrete and
identifiable class of persons. The term may include matters
which do not involve formal parties and may extend to
legislation or policy making that is narrowly focused on the
interests of a discrete and identifiable class of persons. It
does not, however, cover consideration or adoption of broad
policy options directed to the interests of a large and diverse
group of persons. The particular matters covered by this part
include a judicial or other proceeding, application or request
for a ruling or other determination, contract, claim,
controversy, charge, accusation or arrest.\4\
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\4\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2640.103(a)(1).
Not everything a government official does involves a particular
matter. If a matter does not focus on the interests of a discrete and
identifiable class of persons or parties, it is not a particular
matter. For instance, a decision pertaining to government land that
focuses broadly on the interests of the general public, Native American
tribes, mining companies, universities, scientific researchers and
others may not be a particular matter.\5\ A decision focused
specifically on the financial interests of mining companies as a class
or the financial interests of a specific mining company may be a
particular matter.
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\5\ OGE's regulations offer this example: ``A change by the
Department of Labor to health and safety regulations applicable to all
employers in the United States is not a particular matter.'' 5 C.F.R.
Sec. 2640.103(a)(1), example 4.
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There are two kinds of particular matters. ``Particular matters of
general applicability'' are matters that focus on the interests of a
discrete and identifiable class of persons (e.g., a specific
industry).\6\ ``Particular matters involving specific parties'' are
matters that focus on the interests of identified parties (e.g.,
consideration of individual permit applications).\7\ A decision focused
narrowly on the interests of the oil extraction industry is a
particular matter of general applicability,\8\ while a decision to
grant or revoke an individual permit for a company is a particular
matter involving specific parties.\9\ OGE's regulations explain that a
particular matter involving specific parties ``typically involves a
specific proceeding affecting the legal rights of the parties or an
isolatable transaction or related set of transactions between
identified parties, such as a specific contract, grant, license,
product approval application, enforcement action, administrative
adjudication, or court case.'' \10\ The term ``party matter'' is often
used as shorthand for a particular matter involving specific parties.
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\6\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2640.102(m) (``Particular matter of general
applicability means a particular matter that is focused on the
interests of a discrete and identifiable class of persons, but does not
involve specific parties.'').
\7\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2640.102(l) (``Particular matter involving
specific parties includes any judicial or other proceeding,
application, request for a ruling or other determination, contract,
claim, controversy, investigation, charge, accusation, arrest or other
particular matter involving a specific party or parties. The term
typically involves a specific proceeding affecting the legal rights of
the parties, or an isolatable transaction or related set of
transactions between identified parties.'').
\8\ OGE's regulations offer this example: ``A regulation published
by the Department of Agriculture applicable only to companies that
operate meat packing plants is a particular matter.'' 5 C.F.R.
Sec. 2640.103(a)(1) (example 3).
\9\ See 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2641.201(h)(1), example 1 (referring to
approval of a specific city's application for Federal assistance for a
renewal project).
\10\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2641.20t(h)(1). This regulation interprets the
term as used in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 207, but OGE applies the same concept to
its impartiality regulation at 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502.
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Imputed Financial Interests
The conflict of interest law imputes only certain specified
financial interests to an executive branch employee. Imputed financial
interests are the financial interests of the following persons:
a spouse;
a minor child;
the employee's general partner;
an organization in which the employee is currently serving
as officer, director, trustee, general partner or employee;
or
any person or organization with whom the employee is
negotiating or has any arrangement concerning prospective
employment.\11\
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\11\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a).
Absent from this list are the financial interests of a spouse's
employer, an adult child, an adult child's employer, or a former
employer of an official. The conflict of interest law does not impute
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the interests of these person to an executive branch employee.
Congress made a decision not cover the financial interests of these
persons. If there is dissatisfaction with this law, Congress could
expand its coverage to include former employers. Doing so, however,
would limit the ability of anyone who has worked in a particular
industry regulated or affected by an agency to serve in that agency.
Trump's first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was able to perform
the full range of his duties as Secretary of State because he had
resigned his position Exxon, which had interests affected by the
Department of State's work, and he had divested his financial interests
in that company.\12\ If the interests of former employers had been
imputed to executive branch employees, Secretary Tillerson would have
needed to recuse from all matters affecting Exxon during his entire
time in office, even after completing his divestitures.
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\12\ See Ethics Agreement of Rex Tillerson (Jan. 3, 2017), https://
tinyurl.com/4bzHv8m7.
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Likewise, the financial interests of Secretary David Bernhardt's
former lobbying firm employer were not imputed to him under the
conflict of interest law because he had resigned from the firm.\13\
Even without having his former employer's financial interests imputed
to him, Secretary Bernhardt had to recuse from matters affecting his
own former lobbying clients. The Washington Post contemporaneously
reported: ``Having worked for years as a lobbyist representing many of
the very businesses he now regulates, he walked into the No. 2 job at
Interior with so many potential conflicts of interest he has to carry a
small card listing them all.'' \14\ If his former employer's interests
had been imputed to him, his conflicts of interests would have
multiplied exponentially. That employer describes itself as ``the
nation's No. 1 federal lobbying firm based on revenue,'' and Open
Secrets indicates that the firm had 323 known clients in 2023--
including energy and mining companies.\15\ Secretary Bernhardt would
have had to carry around not a card but a tome listing all of the
firm's lobbying clients, and he would have need to update it daily.
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\13\ See Ethics Agreement of David Bernhardt (May 1, 2017), https:/
/tinyurl.com/289us5jk.
\14\ Juliet Eilperin, Zinke's #2 has so many potential conflicts of
interest he has to carry a list of them all, WASH. POST (Nov. 19,
2018), https://tinyurl.com/2m42n4zf.
\15\ Open Secrets, Lobbying Firm Profile: Brownstein, Hyatt et al,
https://tinyurl.com/2ebkxask (last viewed Apr. 29, 2024).
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Types of Interests Covered
The conflict of interest law is applicable only to financial
interests.\16\ It is not applicable to the views, hopes, aspirations,
ideologies, or policy objectives of executive branch employees. For
example, the conflict of interest law covers an Assistant to the
President's financial interests in real estate companies and investment
funds, but it does not cover that official's views on peace in the
Middle East, relations with foreign allies, or federal criminal
sentencing guidelines. The conflict of interest law is inapplicable
even to policy objectives that an executive branch employees happens to
share with others, such as a former employer. If this were not true,
former Interior Secretaries like Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt would
have been unable to serve based on their real or perceived sympathy
with industries whose work the Interior Department affects.\17\
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\16\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a).
\17\ See, e.g., Devan Cole, New York Times: Acting interior
secretary worked to block report on endangered species, CNN (Mar. 26,
2019) (``The [New York Times] reported that the new approach from
Bernhardt, a former fossil fuels lobbyist who currently serves as the
department's acting secretary, was `one that pesticide makers and users
had lobbied intensively to promote.' ''), https://tinyurl.com/39ba6fmu;
Ben LeFebvre, Trump Interior secretary crossed lines in land dealings
with Halliburton executive, watchdog finds, Politico (Feb. 16, 2022)
(``The report from the department's inspector general confirms a series
of issues POLITICO brought to light in 2018 during Zinke's tenure as
former President Donald Trump's Interior Secretary. These issues
include Zinke's attempts to aid Halliburton's then-chair David Lesar
and other developers in creating a commercial development known as 95
Karrow on land adjacent to a vacant lot in Montana that Zinke
controlled through a family-run nonprofit foundation, a deal that would
have led to Zinke potentially running a microbrewery on the site. . . .
The inspector general concluded Zinke did not comply with obligations
in his ethics agreement, recusal memorandum and accompanying documents.
. . . But the investigation did not find evidence that Zinke violated
formal conflicts of interest laws or that Interior granted Halliburton
any specific favors.''), https://tinyurl.com/5n87ca6p: Jimmy Tobias,
The Zinke effect: how the US interior department became a tool of big
business, GUARDIAN (Nov. 12, 2018) (``Zinke rapidly installed a slew of
conservative operatives and industry sympathizers in key positions
throughout the agency.''), https://tinyurl.com/y4e64zxf.
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Financial Interests of Nonprofits
Of relevance to the discussion of issues raised in this hearing is
an understanding of the inapplicability of the conflict of interest law
to the policy objectives of nonprofit organizations. During the
administration of President George W. Bush, the Justice Department's
Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion on the degree to which
the law implicated the advocacy work of nonprofits. At the time, the
head of OLC was Steven G. Bradbury, who clerked for Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas and is currently listed as a Distinguished
Fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ Heritage Foundation, Steven G. Bradbury, https://
www.heritage.org/staff/steven-g-bradbury (last viewed Apr. 29, 2024).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under Mr. Bradbury's leadership, OLC rejected the notion that, for
purposes of the conflict of interest law, nonprofits have financial
interests in their lobbying activities. ``We conclude that a nonprofit
organization does not have . . . a `financial interest' merely because
it spends money on advocacy.'' \19\ OLC explained that nonprofits
advocate on various matters because they ``care about these matters,
and spend money to advocate in favor of their preferred outcome,
because they support or oppose certain policies, not because the
policies at issue will have a financial or pecuniary impact on [them]
as organizations.'' \20\ For this reason, the conflict of interest law
is inapplicable to the interests of nonprofits in their advocacy work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ Off. of Legal Couns., Dep't of Justice, Memorandum Opinion for
the General Counsel, Office of Government Ethics, Financial Interests
of Nonprofit Organizations for Purposes of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208, 30
O.L.C. 64 (2006), https://www.justice.gov/file/494541/dl.
\20\ Id., at 67. OLC found irrelevant any claim that nonprofits
might have to spend more or less on their advocacy efforts depending on
the government's actions: ``Any other financial consequences for
[nonprofits] that may flow from these matters are speculative.'' Id.,
at 69.
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Native American Birth Rights
At 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(b)(4), the conflict of interest law exempts
the following financial interests from its coverage:
(4) if the financial interest that would be affected by the
particular matter involved is that resulting solely from the
interest of the officer or employee, or his or her spouse or
minor child, in birthrights----
(A) in an Indian tribe, band, nation, or other
organized group or community, including any Alaska
Native village corporation as defined in or established
pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act,
which is recognized as eligible for the special
programs and services provided by the United States to
Indians because of their status as Indians,
(B) in an Indian allotment the title to which is held
in trust by the United States or which is inalienable
by the allottee without the consent of the United
States, or
(C) in an Indian claims fund held in trust or
administered by the United States, if the particular
matter does not involve the Indian allotment or claims
fund or the Indian tribe, band, nation, organized group
or community, or Alaska Native village corporation as a
specific party or parties.
Therefore, it would be inappropriate for members or witnesses in
the hearing to attribute a conflict of interest to any financial
interests flowing from a covered birthright in a Native American tribe.
Case Studies
The subcommittee's hearing notice, as well as the correspondence of
members of the subcommittee with the Interior Department, suggest that
it would be helpful to discuss how the primarily conflict of interest
law, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208, applies in the context of the following case
studies.
1. Secretary Debra Haaland's adult child or the adult child's employer
Under the conflict of interest law, Secretary Haaland does not have
a conflict of interest with the financial interests of either her adult
child or her adult child's employer because the law does not impute
those interests to Secretary Haaland.
2. Secretary Haaland's spouse or the spouse's employer
Secretary Haaland's 2023 financial disclosure indicates that her
spouse has consulted for Laguna Development Corporation. Under the
conflict of interest law, the financial interests of this company are
not imputed to Secretary Haaland. Only her spouse's financial interests
in his compensation are imputed to her, not the financial interests of
her spouse's employer. The report indicates he was paid ``consulting
fees'' and has deferred compensation in the form of cash.\21\ There is
no indication that this compensation is a variable financial interest
based on the company's future profitability, so there is no indication
that any particular matter would be likely to have a direct and
predictable effect on his compensation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Public Financial Disclosure Report of Debra Anne Haaland (OGE
Form 278e), 3 (May 9, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/38vccv6u.
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3. Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis' former employer
Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis does not have a conflict of
interest with her former employer, the National Wildlife Federation,
under the conflict of interest law because its financial interests are
not imputed to her.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\22\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Principal Deputy Director Nada Wolff
Culver's former employer
Principal Deputy Director Culver does not have a conflict of
interest with her former employer because its interests are not imputed
to her.\23\
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\23\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a).
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THE IMPARTIALITY REGULATION
It is also important to understand some key aspects of OGE's
impartiality regulation, 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502, which imposes an
appearance-based recusal obligation.
Basic Restriction
OGE's impartiality regulation establishes the following basic
restriction:
(a) Consideration of appearances by the employee. Where an
employee knows that a particular matter involving specific
parties is likely to have a direct and predictable effect on
the financial interest of a member of his household, or knows
that a person with whom he has a covered relationship is or
represents a party to such matter, and where the employee
determines that the circumstances would cause a reasonable
person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question his
impartiality in the matter, the employee should not participate
in the matter unless he has informed the agency designee of the
appearance problem and received authorization from the agency
designee in accordance with paragraph (d) of this section.\24\
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\24\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(a).
For purposes of this hearing, several phrases in this language are
important to note, due to their operative effect on the regulation's
applicability. These phrases are ``particular matter involving specific
parties,'' ``covered relationship,'' ``is or represents a party,''
``employee determines'' and ``reasonable person with knowledge of the
relevant facts.''
``particular matter involving specific parties''
The recusal obligation under OGE's impartiality regulation applies
only to particular matters involving specific parties.\25\ As discussed
in the preceding section, the term particular matter involving specific
patties covers only a matter focused on the interests of identified
parties.\26\ ``The term typically involves a specific proceeding
affecting the legal rights of the parties, or an isolatable transaction
or related set of transactions between identified parties.'' \27\ This
type of recusal obligation is sometimes called a ``party-matter
recusal'' as a useful, albeit imprecise, shorthand.
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\25\ Id.
\26\ Off. Of Gov't Ethics, ``Particular Matter Involving Specific
Parties,'' ``Particular Matter,'' and ``Matter'', Legal Advisory 06x09
(2006), https://tinyurl.com/26r7sjym.
\27\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2640.102(1); see also 5 C.F.R. Sec. 201(h)(1)
(using the same language).
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The party-matter recusal does not apply to a ``particular matter of
general applicability.'' An employee subject to a party-matter recusal
with respect to a former corporate employer could choose to participate
in the issuance of an industry-wide regulation affecting the former
employer along with all other members of the employer's industry. This
is true, for instance, when a former mining company executive chooses
to participate as a government official in a regulation affecting all
mining companies.\28\ The official could always choose to recuse from
the industry-wide regulation, but OGE's impartiality regulation would
not make recusal mandatory.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\28\ The conflict of interest law, however, would impose a separate
recusal obligation if that official held stock in any such company.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The concept of a party-matter recusal is narrow in scope compared
to an obligation to recuse from all particular matters, including
particular matters of general applicability. ``When this language is
used,'' OGE has explained, ``it reflects `a deliberate effort to impose
a more limited ban and to narrow the circumstances in which the ban is
to operate.' '' \29\
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\29\ U.S. Off. of Gov't Ethics, Legal Advisory 06x09 (2006)
(quoting Bayless Manning, Federal Conflict of Interest Law 204 (1964)),
https://tinyurl.com/26r7sjym.
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``covered relationship''
OGE's impartiality regulation defines the term ``covered
relationship.'' Only the portions of that definition relevant to this
hearing are discussed here, but the full definition can be found at 5
C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(1).
The regulation establishes a covered relationship with an
individual ``who is a relative with whom the employee has a close
personal relationship.'' \30\ This could be presumed to include an
adult child in most instances. The regulation does not, however,
establish a covered relationship with the employer of an independent
adult child of an executive branch employee.\31\
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\30\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(1)(ii).
\31\ See 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(1)(ii)-(iv). The regulation
establishes a covered relationship with the employer of only a
``dependent child.'' In 2023, OGE implicitly acknowledged that the
impartiality regulation does not currently apply to the employer of an
independent adult child by proposing to expand the coverage to cover
all children of an executive branch official. Specifically, OGE
proposed to remove the word ``dependent'' in the phrase ``dependent
child'' in 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(iii). To date, however, OGE has
not issued a final regulation, and, because at least one federal agency
has objected to this change, it is not clear what OGE plans to do.
Comment of National Aeronautics and Space Administration on RIN 3209-
AA43, https://tinyurl.com/ms4nc2dm. Unless and until OGE decides to
adopt this proposed change when it issues a final regulation, the
impartiality regulation remains inapplicable to an adult child's
employer. If OGE does make this change, it will not have retroactive
effect. U.S. Off. of Gov't Ethics, Modernization Updates to Standards
of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, 88 Fed. Reg.
10774, 10781 (Feb. 21, 2023) (referring to the ``first year in which
the regulations become effective ``), https://tinyurl.com/3ydk9n7b.
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Also of relevance is the regulation's coverage of the former
employer or client of an executive branch employee. The regulation
imposes a recusal obligation, in the case of an employer, for a period
of one year from the date on which the executive branch employee
resigned from the former employer or, in the case of a client, ceased
to provide services to the client.\32\
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\32\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(1)(iv).
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Finally, the regulation establishes a covered relationship with an
organization or individual ``for whom the employee's spouse . . . is,
to the employee's knowledge, serving or seeking to serve as an officer,
director, trustee, general partner, agent, attorney, consultant,
contractor or employee.'' \33\ Unlike the covered relationship with an
employee's own former client, the covered relationship with a spouse's
former client ceases when the spouse is no longer performing services
or seeking to perform services for the former client.\34\
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\33\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(1)(iii).
\34\ Compare 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(iii) (``serving or seeking
to serve'') with 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(iv) (``has, within the last
year, served'').
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``employee determines'' and ``reasonable person with knowledge of the
relevant facts''
By its very terms, OGE's impartiality regulation applies when the
employee has determined that recusal is necessary. Although the phrase
``reasonable person'' is usually understood to require the application
of what is known in law as an objective standard, OGE's regulation
applies a hybrid subjective-objective standard. It is the employee who
must consider whether a reasonable person would be concerned about the
employee's participation in a matter. If the employee has considered
the appearance of participating in a particular matter involving
specific parties and has determined that a reasonable person would not
be concerned, the employee may participate in the matter.
The government is not powerless to mandate recusal when the
employee has determined that a reasonable person would not be concerned
about the employee's participation. The government can take the
``reasonable person'' inquiry out of the employee's hands by having an
ethics official make the determination.\35\ For the recusal obligation
to apply in that case, the ethics official must make the determination
and must communicate that determination to the employee before the
employee participates in a matter. If the ethics official has not
communicated this determination to the employee, the employee's
participation in the matter will not violate OGE's impartiality
regulation.
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\35\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(c).
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Case Studies
The subcommittee's hearing notice, as well as the correspondence of
members of the subcommittee with the Interior Department, suggest that
it would be helpful to discuss how OGE's impartiality regulation, 5
C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502, applies in the context of the following case
studies.
5. Secretary Debra Haaland's adult child or the adult child's employer
Under OGE's impartiality regulation, Secretary Haaland has a
covered relationship as to her adult child; however, the regulation
does not establish a covered relationship with her adult child's
employer.\36\ Therefore, the impartiality regulation does impose a
recusal obligation on Secretary Haaland with respect to her adult
child's employer.
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\36\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(ii),(iii).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Secretary Haaland's alleged involvement with the adult child's
employer
A complaint filed by an outside complainant alleged that Secretary
Haaland has been involved directly with the adult child's employer with
respect to an interview she gave that employer during the Trump
administration.\37\ The complainant, however, concedes that Secretary
Haaland recorded the video as a member of Congress before she was
appointed to the executive branch.\38\ This concession is dispositive
of the issue with respect to the video because, as this subcommittee is
well aware, neither OGE's impartiality regulation nor its separate
misuse of position regulation apply to Members of Congress.\39\
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\37\ Letter from Michael Chamberlain, Director,Protect the Public's
Trust to Mark Greenblatt Inspector General, U.S. Dep't of the Interior
(Aug. 17, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/yv462ecb (hereinafter
``Chamberlain I'').
\38\ Id. at 2-3.
\39\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. Sec. 2635.502, 2635.702.
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The complainant tries to link Secretary Haaland's appearance in the
interview to her executive branch position by pointing out that the
group later added footage of her to the video after the Senate
confirmed her appointment as Secretary.\40\ The problem with this
attempt to establish a linkage is that OGE's regulations restrict only
the activities of executive branch employees. OGE has no authority, and
does not purport to, regulate the activities of private citizens or the
nonprofit organizations they form. Any attempt by the executive branch
to control the content of the video produced by the employer of the
Secretary's adult child would implicate First Amendment concerns.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\40\ Chamberlain I, at 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In any event, absent a covered relationship with the adult child's
employer, Secretary Haaland had no recusal obligation as to that
organization under OGE's impartiality regulation. To the extent that
the complainant and subcommittee members may contend that Secretary
Haaland shares views with that organization, the impartiality
regulation is inapplicable. This situation is no different than an
Interior Secretary holding views that an energy company also happens to
hold. The ethics rules do not regulate thought.
7. Secretary Haaland's spouse and the spouse's employer
OGE's impartiality regulation establishes a covered relationship
with Secretary Haaland's spouse. It also establishes a covered
relationship with Laguna Development Corporation (LDC), but only during
the period when her spouse was serving or seeking to serve as a
contractor or consultant of that firm.\41\
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\41\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b)(iii).
The subcommittee must be mindful of the narrow scope of the recusal
obligation as to LDC. During the period in which the spouse was
providing services or seeking to provide services to LDC, Secretary
Haaland had an obligation to recusal from particular matters involving
specific parties in which LDC was a party or represented a party. This
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
recusal obligation under the impartiality regulation did not apply to:
broad policy matters,
particular matters of general applicability,
particular matters involving specific parties in which LDC
was not a party and did not represent a party, or
particular matters affecting LDC's interests that did not
directly and predictably affect the spouse's compensation
and in which LDC was not a party or the representative of a
party.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\42\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(a).
There seems to be no allegation that Secretary Haaland participated
in a covered particular matter involving specific parties in which LDC
was a party or represented a party while her spouse was providing
services or seeking to provide services to LDC.
8. allegation pertaining to Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis'
alleged participation in the development of an order issued by
Secretary Haaland
Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis had a covered
relationship with her former employer, National Wildlife Federation
(NWF) for a period of one year from the date of her resignation. A
complaint filed by an outside complainant suggested that she violated
OGE's impartiality regulation with respect to NWF, but the complaint
does not support even a reasonable suspicion of a violation much less a
finding that a violation occurred.\43\ That is because the complaint
does not allege facts establishing her participation in a particular
matter involving specific parties in which NWF was a party or
represented a party.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\43\ Letter from Michael Chamberlain, Director, Protect the
Public's Trust to Mark Greenblatt Inspector General, U.S. Dep't of the
Interior (Sep. 13, 2023), https://tinyurLcom/3pb3rpmj (hereinafter
``Chamberlain II'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complaint suggests that Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis
may have influenced an order that Secretary Haaland issued in May 2021,
which temporarily halted all activities related to the Coastal Plain of
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (``Arctic Refuge'') and required
the department to conduct a new study of affected programs based on
deficiencies in a prior administration's study. The complaint seeks to
link development of the Secretary's order to litigation filed by NWF
based on a perceived relatedness of the two distinct matters. NWF is
one of several parties to a lawsuit challenging the prior
administration's environmental analysis and decision pertaining to oil
and gas leases in the Arctic Refuge. The complaint alleges that
deficiencies identified in the order are ``very similar'' to
deficiencies identified by the plaintiffs in the litigation.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\44\ Chamberlain II, at 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complaint also alleges that ``Ms. Daniel-Davis participated
personally and substantially in decisions relating to the suspension of
activities related to the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Lease Program,''
specially that she issued letters canceling several leases on the day
the Secretary issued the order.\45\ The complaint seeks to link the
issuance of these letters to the litigation by arguing that ``[s]everal
legal arguments'' articulated in the letters were ``similar'' to
arguments raised by the plaintiffs in the litigation.\46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\45\ Id., at 1-2.
\46\ Id., at 3-4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are several problems with this complaint.
First, it is not clear that the complaint focuses on particular
matters involving specific parties, which raises a question as to the
applicability of OGE's impartiality regulation.\47\ There are three
possibilities with respect to development of Secretary Haaland's order:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\47\ Secretary of Interior Debra Haaland, Comprehensive Analysis
and Temporary Halt on all Activities in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge Relating to the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program, Order
No. 3401 (June 1, 2021), https://tinyurl.com/4zbxrywn.
Matter--The order was merely a ``matter'' and not a
``particular matter'' if it focused broadly on a variety of
interests. In that case, Sec. 2635.502 did not apply to
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
development of the order.
Particular Matter--The order was a ``particular matter of
general applicability'' if it focused on the interests of
both existing and prospective lessees (i.e., the oil and
gas industry, which is a discrete and identifiable class)
or even all lessees (i.e., the parties to several different
particular matters involving specific parties, namely the
leases). In that case, Sec. 2635.502 did not apply to
development of the order.
Particular Matter Involving Specific Parties--The order
was a ``particular matter involving specific parties'' if
it focused narrowly on an existing lease. In that case,
Sec. 2635.502 would apply to development of the order.
The order's focus was clearly broader than that just one lease. It
ordered the cessation of ``all activities of the Federal Government
relating to the implementation of the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing
Program.'' \48\ This program-wide order involved all existing leases.
It may also have involved all prospective leases by ceasing activities
of an entire program under which a lease application could be filed.
This makes the order a ``particular matter of general applicability''
if it focused narrowly on the interest of all existing lessees or on
the interests of existing and prospective lessees. It makes the order a
mere ``matter'' if the order is focused on the interests of more
classes of persons than only existing and prospective lessees. In
either case, the order is not a particular matter involving specific
parties and the impartiality regulation did not apply to development of
the order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\48\ Id., at 1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Implementation of the order through the cancellation of leases
might have been part of the same ``particular matter of general
applicability'' or ``matter'' as the order itself. The order expressly
provided that ``[t]he Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals
Management and the Director of the BLM shall, as appropriate and
consistent with applicable law, take appropriate action with respect to
existing leases in light of the direction provided herein.'' \49\ The
cancellation of some leases on the same day that the order was issued
suggests that this action was specifically provided for in the order.
In that case, the cancellation of leases also may not have been a
particular matter involving specific parties, in which case the
impartiality regulation did not apply.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\49\ Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the other hand, the department appears to have canceled other
leases on a later date, suggesting that the cancellation of leases
might have been subject to Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis' review
and discretion on a case-by-case basis.\50\ If so, the cancellation of
each lease would be a separate particular matter involving specific
parties.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\50\ See Becky Bohrer and Matthew Daly, Biden administration
cancels remaining oil and gas leases in Alaska's Arctic Refuge, Assoc.
Press (Sep. 7, 2023), https://tinyurl.com/mvk2a26m.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second, if each lease cancellation was a separate particular matter
involving specific parties, the impartiality regulation would have
applied only if NWF was a party to the lease at issue or represented a
lessee. NWF, of course, was not a party to any of the leases and did
not represent any lessee. There is no allegation that Acting Deputy
Secretary Daniel-Davis had a covered relationship any of the companies
that were lessees or with their representatives. Therefore, the
impartiality regulation would not have restricted her participation in
any of the lease cancellations.
The impartiality regulation does not require recusal when a person
with whom an employee has a covered relationship is neither a party nor
the representative of a party. NWF's litigation was a separate
particular matter involving specific parties distinct from the leases
themselves; cancellation of a lease was one particular matter involving
specific parties, and the litigation was a another particular matter
involving specific parties.\51\ Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis's
obligation was to recuse from the litigation. The regulation restricted
her from appearing in court on behalf of the Interior Department and
from making recommendations or decisions as to who should be called as
witnesses, what motions should be filed, or whether to enter into a
settlement agreement. There appears to be no allegation that she did
any of these things.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\51\ See 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2641.201(h)(1) (explaining that ``a specific
proceeding affecting the legal rights of the parties'' is one
particular matter involving specific parties).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Third, the flaw in the complainant's analysis is obvious. The
complaint alleges that ``Ms. Daniel-Davis' actions suspending leases
and lease operations pursuant to the Coastal Plains ROD had a direct
and predictable effect on litigation concerning the Coastal Plains
ROD.'' \52\ But the applicable standard under the impartiality
regulation does not ask whether her actions had ``direct and
predictable effect'' on NWF's litigation. The applicable standard asks
whether NWF was a party to a lease or the representative of a party to
the lease.\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\52\ Chamberlain II, at 6.
\53\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(a).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The complainant has mistakenly cited the standard for the conflict
of interest law, which addresses the direct and predictable effect of a
particular matter on an executive branch employee's financial interests
or those of a person whose financial interests are imputed to the
employee.\54\ This conflation of the impartiality regulation with the
conflict of interest law distorts both of these authorities. As
discussed in the previous section on the conflict of interest law,
NWF's financial interests are not imputed to Acting Deputy Director
Daniel-Davis--if NWF even has any financial interests in the
litigation, a question not addressed in the complaint.\55\ The conflict
of interest law does not impute the financial interests of a former
employer to an executive branch employee, and the impartiality
regulation is not concerned with the financial interests of NWF.\56\
The impartiality regulation is focused only on the identities of the
parties to the particular matter involving specific parties in which
the executive branch employee is alleged to have participated. In this
instance, Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis participated in the
cancellation of leases to which NWF was not a party and with respect to
which NWF did not represent a party. The impartiality regulation did
not apply.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\54\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a).
\55\ As explained above, OLC explained during the Bush
administration that nonprofits like NWF have no financial interests in
their advocacy work for purposes of the conflict of interest law. Off.
of Legal Couns., Dep't of Justice, Memorandum Opinion for the General
Counsel, Office Of Government Ethics, Financial Interests of Nonprofit
Organizations for Purposes of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208, 30 O.L.C. 64 (2006),
https://www.justice.gov/file/4945411dl. Whether that opinion leaves
room for a finding that a nonprofit plaintiff has a financial interest
in litigation, when the nonprofit is not seeking damages, presents
questions of law and fact not addressed in the complaint.
\56\ 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208(a); 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(a).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. allegation pertaining to Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis'
alleged participation in a meeting at which litigation may have
been discussed
As mentioned earlier, NWF is involved in litigation with the
department. The complaint raised a second allegation, which was that
Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis may have violated the impartiality
regulation by participating in a meeting at which some unspecified
litigation was discussed. The complaint says that she scheduled a
meeting vaguely titled ``Meeting re: Arctic Litigation Update.'' The
complaint acknowledges that the complainant does not know whether this
meeting focused on the case in which NWF was a party. This meeting
could have addressed a different case.
If the meeting did involve an update on NWF's case, there is no
indication that Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-Davis participated in
the case itself. The meeting is titled ``update,'' which suggests that
she merely received information about the status of a case and possibly
its effect on other activities. If there was no deliberation,
recommendation or decision made regarding the handling of the case, the
impartiality regulation would not have applied because she did not
participate in the case.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\57\ If she had participated in the case--perhaps by deciding what
witnesses to call or drafting a motion--the next step would have been
for her to either consult an ethics official or assess whether the
circumstances would cause a reasonable person with knowledge of the
relevant facts to question her impartiality in the matter. 5 C.F.R.
Sec. 2635.502(a), (c).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. BLM Principal Deputy Director Nada Wolff Culver's former employer
The Inspector General found a violation by BLM Principal Deputy
Director Nada Wolff Culver when she met with a former employer, but the
violation pertained to the Ethics Pledge and not OGE's impartiality
regulation.\58\ There is no indication that she violated OGE's
impartiality regulation by meeting with her former employer.\59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\58\ Off. of the Insp. Gen., U.S. Dep't of the Interior, Bureau of
Land Management Official Did Not Comply With the Federal Ethics Pledge,
Report No. 21-0728 (Aug. 18, 2022), https://tinyurl.com/52u5cec8.
\59\ Id. at 4 (``We did not, however, substantiate the allegations
that the BLM Official violated 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502 or the Ethics
Pledge by participating in the PLOs or the Federal lawsuits; we drew
this conclusion because the PLOs were not particular matters involving
specific parties and because neither Former Employer 1 nor Former
Employer 2'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ETHICS PLEDGE
It is also important to understand some key aspects of the ethics
pledge under President Biden's executive order titled ``Ethics
Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel.'' \60\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\60\ Exec. Order 13989 (Jan. 20, 2021), https://tinyurl.com/
43ry2dxk.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Basic Restriction
Though the Ethics Pledge uses different language than OGE's
impartiality regulation, the Ethics Pledge tracks that regulation with
two differences: the Ethics Pledge covers a different period than the
regulation, and it restricts participation in certain meetings
regardless of the subjects of those meetings. Paragraph 2 of Section 1
of Executive Order 13989 requires political appointees to sign Ethics
Pledges in which they commit to the following restriction:
I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my
appointment participate in any particular matter involving
specific parties that is directly and substantially related to
my former employer or former clients, including regulations and
contracts.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\61\ Exec. Order 13989, Sec. 1, para.2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Executive Order supplies the following two definitions:
(j) ``Particular matter involving specific parties'' shall have
the same meaning as set forth in section 2641.201(h) of title
5, Code of Federal Regulations, except that it shall also
include any meeting or other communication relating to the
performance of one's official duties with a former employer or
former client, unless the communication applies to a particular
matter of general applicability and participation in the
meeting or other event is open to all interested parties.
...
(m) ``Directly and substantially related to my former employer
or former clients'' shall mean matters in which the appointee's
former employer or a former client is a party or represents a
party.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\62\ Exec. Order 13989, Sec. 2(j), (m).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Case Study: Inspector General's finding regarding BLM Principal
Deputy Director Nada Wolff Culver
The Inspector General (IG) found that BLM Principal Deputy Director
Nada Wolff Culver violated the Ethics Pledge by meeting with a former
employer in 2021. However, the IG also found ``that there are facts
mitigating the significance of our finding of an Ethics Pledge
violation in this case.'' \63\ The IG identified the following
mitigating facts:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\63\ Off. of the Insp. Gen., U.S. Dep't of the Interior, Bureau of
Land Management Official Did Not Comply With the Federal Ethics Pledge,
Report No. 21-0728, at 6 (Aug. 18, 2022), https://tinyurl.com/52u5cec8.
The conduct was inadvertent. The IG found that the ethics
official ``provided the BLM Official with inaccurate
interim ethics guidance that failed to identify Former
Employer 1 as one of the BLM Official's former employers
for purposes of the Ethics Pledge, and the BLM Official
stated that they relied on this ethics advice before the
meeting with Former Employer 1.'' \64\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\64\ Id.
Principal Deputy Director Culver turned herself in. The IG
found that ``the BLM Official self-disclosed the meeting
with the former employer to the (ethics official) after
receiving updated ethics guidance correctly identifying
Former Employer 1 as a former employer for purposes of the
Ethics Pledge.'' \65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\65\ Id.
Principal Deputy Director Culver violated the rule once
and did not violate it again. The IG ``identified no other
meetings the BLM Official attended with former employers
that did not include a multiplicity of parties after
receiving the updated and corrected ethics guidance from
the [ethics officials.'' \66\ (The reference to a
``multiplicity of parties'' relates to the exception to the
restriction on meetings in the definition of ``particular
matter involving specific parties'' in the Executive Order
for any ``meeting or other event is open to all interested
parties.'') \67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\66\ Id.
\67\ Exec. Order 13989, Sec. 2(j).
12. Case Study: Secretary Haaland and Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-
Davis
Paragraph 2 of the Ethics Pledge addresses only former employers
and clients of the executive branch appointee. Therefore, this
provision is not relevant to allegations concerning Secretary Haaland's
adult child, her adult child's employer, her spouse, or her spouse's
employer. The Ethics Pledge applies to Acting Deputy Secretary Daniel-
Davis' former employer, but the analysis with respect to the Ethics
Pledge is the same as the analysis with respect to the impartiality
regulation discussed above.
The only differences are that the Ethics Pledge applied for a
period after the impartiality regulation ceased to apply, and the
Ethics Pledge covered some meetings that the impartiality regulation
did not cover because they did not qualify as particular matters
involving specific parties. If any allegations arising at the hearings
pertain to meetings involving persons with whom these officials had
covered relationships, OGE's guidance on the Ethics Pledge specifically
addresses an exception to the obligation to recuse from meetings under
the Ethics Pledge:
The expanded party matter definition has a two-part exception
for communications with an appointee's former employer or
client, if the communication is: (1) about a particular matter
of general applicability and (2) is made at a meeting or other
event at which participation is open to all interested parties.
Although the exception refers to particular matters of general
applicability, it also is intended to cover communications and
meetings regarding policies that do not constitute particular
matters. An appointee may participate in communications and
meetings with a former employer or client about these
particular or non-particular matters if the meeting or event is
``open to all interested parties.'' Exec. order No. 13490 sec.
2(h). Because meeting spaces are typically limited, and time
and other practical considerations also may constrain the size
of meetings, common sense demands that reasonable limits be
placed on what it means to be ``open to all interested
parties.'' Such meetings do not have to be open to every comer,
but should include a multiplicity of parties. For example, if
an agency is holding a meeting with five or more stakeholders
regarding a given policy or piece of legislation, an appointee
could attend such a meeting even if one of the stakeholders is
a former employer or former client; such circumstances do not
raise the concerns about special access at which the Executive
Order is directed. Additionally, the Pledge is not intended to
preclude an appointee from participating in rulemaking under
section 553 of the Administrative Procedure Act simply because
a former employer or client may have submitted written comments
in response to a public notice of proposed rulemaking. In any
event, agency ethics officials will have to exercise judgment
in determining whether a specific forum qualifies as a meeting
or other event that is ``open to all interested parties,'' and
OGE is prepared to assist with this analysis.\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\68\ U.S. Off. of Gov't Ethics, Legal Advisory DO-09-011 (Mar. 26,
2009), https://tinyurl.com/3vantf48. Although this guidance originally
addressed an earlier executive order, OGE has added the following note
at the top of the first page: ``All substantive legal interpretations
in this Legal Advisory are applicable to Executive Order 13989, sec. 1,
par. 2. See LA-21-03, LA-21-05, and LA-21-07.'' Id. at 1.
Based on this official guidance, the subcommittee cannot
meaningfully consider the applicability of the Ethics Pledge to any
meetings attended by these officials without first knowing whether
there the requisite multiplicity of stakeholders participated in the
meetings. That may be difficult at the hearing, given that no officials
from the Department of the Interior have been called to testify. One
optic may be to defer discussion of any such meetings until after these
officials have been consulted regarding the multiplicity question.
APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY
Finally, it bears noting that OGE's regulations include a general
appearance standard at 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.101(b)(14). That standard
provides that ``[e]mployees shall endeavor to avoid any actions
creating the appearance that they are violating the law or the ethical
standards set forth in this part.'' \69\ With respect to impartiality
concerns, however, OGE's impartiality regulation is the executive
branch's specific implementation of this appearance standard.\70\ When
OGE proposed 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502 in 1991, it explained: ``Proposed
Sec. 2635.502 is addressed to the troublesome area commonly referred to
as appearance problems.'' \71\ An employee can elect to go beyond the
requirements of Sec. 2635.502, but an employee who has complied with
that section cannot be said to have violated the principle articulated
at Sec. 2635.101(b)(14).
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\69\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.101(b)(14).
\70\ 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502.
\71\ Off. of Gov't Ethics, Standards of Ethical Conduct for
Employees of the Executive Branch, 57 Fed. Reg. 33778-85 (1991),
https://tinyurl.com/35fymjnj.
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______
Ms. Stansbury. Great, thank you, I appreciate that.
I think there has been an interesting discussion this
morning about foreign influence on our policies. And I know,
Mr. Painter, you were just asked about this a few moments ago,
and in my personal opinion were very disrespectfully
interrupted. So, I would love if you could share with us what
you believe can be done to attenuate the influence of foreign
actors over policies that the Department of the Interior is
engaged in, whether that is mining, oil and gas leasing, and
other areas that these multi-national corporations may have an
interest in.
Mr. Painter. First, a lot of the influence comes from the
White House, and this is over Democratic and Republican
administrations. In my 2009 book about ethics in Washington,
``Getting the Government America Deserves,'' I recommended we
have an Inspector General in the White House. That would help.
I have also recently recommended an Inspector General at
the U.S. Supreme Court, but that is maybe beside the point of
this hearing.
Furthermore, the Foreign Agents Registration Act needs to
be enforced, and also needs to be amended to be very clear as
to who is covered and who is not, and which activities need to
be disclosed. This was passed in 1938 to protect the United
States against German, Japanese, and Soviet influence, and
there has been very haphazard enforcement of FARA, and the
Congress needs to revisit the statute.
The ethics rules need to be revised.
I plead with this Committee to not engage in partisan
attacks in a competition to figure out whether Republicans or
Democrats do a better job of corrupting the Interior Department
or other agencies.
I implore this Committee to fix our campaign finance system
that makes us vulnerable to foreign infiltration. The Citizens
United opinion of the Supreme Court opened the floodgates, and
I can assure you there is a lot of foreign money there, foreign
lobbying money coming into this country.
Our democracy is at risk, and the partisan food fights
aren't helping. This is not to be a spat between MSNBC and Fox
News, I hope. I hope this is a Congress that will protect the
interests of the American people.
And the Interior Department holds these lands in trust for
the American people. There are lands, almost 2 acres for every
American. They don't belong to the oil companies, the gas
companies, and the mining companies. Now, I am fine with
resource extraction when it benefits the American people, but I
want to see this Congress pass ethics rules that will allow the
Interior Department to make its decisions based on science,
based on economics, not based on who had lunch with the Deputy
Secretary of the Interior.
Ms. Stansbury. Well, truly, Mr. Painter, I couldn't have
said it any better than you. I appreciate your commentary here
today.
And I will note, since you brought it up during your
testimony, that we actually just introduced a judicial ethics
bill 2 weeks ago to bring an Inspector General to the Supreme
Court because not only have we seen these sort of ethical
violations across administrations within our agencies, but we
are also seeing unprecedented tampering with the highest court
of the land right now. So, I couldn't agree more
wholeheartedly. Thank you very much.
I yield back.
Dr. Gosar. I thank the gentlewoman. I am going to go back
to the U.S. Department of the Interior. This is this letter
that has been referenced over and over again, and I want to
read two parts.
Based on the information provided to the Department of
Ethics office, the Secretary does not have any direct or
imputed financial interest under U.S.C. Code 208 with her child
or her child's employer. Accordingly, Secretary Haaland was not
required to disclose her child's employment and other business
relationships on her nominee OGE Form 278e, Public Financial
Disclosure Report, or on her subsequent annual OGE Form 278e
Public Financial Disclosure Reports.
Additionally, it is the understanding of the DOE that the
Secretary's child is not currently a member of her household,
and the Secretary therefore does not have a covered
relationship as defined in 5 CFR 2635.502B with the Pueblo
Action Alliance.
However, further down, ``If the Secretary personally
determines that a reasonable person with knowledge of the
relevant facts would not question her impartiality in
performing her official duties in this particular matter, then
she may participate in the particular matter as part of her
official duties.'' To date it is my understanding that the
Secretary has not determined that a recusal under 5 CFR
2635.502 is appropriate as a result of her child's employment.
So, we got that as text from the aspect here.
Mr. Painter, whose voice counts?
Mr. Painter. Whose voice? The American people.
Dr. Gosar. OK, so when it comes down to a Native American
tribe, whose voice counts?
Mr. Painter. I don't understand the point of your question.
I mean, you just cited a code of Federal regulations provision,
and I am happy to explain how it works.
Dr. Gosar. Well, I am not interested in that aspect.
Mr. Painter. I guess not. You just read it, but you don't
want to hear how it works.
Dr. Gosar. I have a lot of questions for you. I am going to
use my time accordingly.
Do you realize that there have been Members of Congress,
including me, that went out to talk to the Navajo Nation, and
we had over 700 families attend and give us a discourse in
regards to what their allotments are, or these oil allotments?
So, my question is, whose voice rules? Is it these
environmental groups, or is it the actual Native allottee?
Mr. Painter. Well, you are going to have to decide, and
then the voters will decide in November whether they want to
keep you here. That is the way it works.
Dr. Gosar. OK. Good, good. So, you say, ``the American
people.'' Under the Taylor Grazing Act, there were some Federal
lands set aside. And what were they set aside for,
conservation?
Mr. Painter. Well, grazing, I mean, but responsible.
Dr. Gosar. They specifically cite that, don't they?
Mr. Painter. Yes.
Dr. Gosar. That they cannot be used for conservation at
all. I think everyone would utilize that, but you have to
improve the Grazing Act from one year to the next, it has to be
improved.
Second, access to energy and minerals, cleaning out the
forest, thinning the forest, and then making sure that this is
all acceptable. Because why? This land is held in trust, right?
Mr. Painter. Yes, and Congress makes those decisions. And
Congress passed a statute, and the statute should be complied
with.
Dr. Gosar. I am glad you said that. Explain to me how you
sell this amortization of Federal lands that just recently
disclosed under the Biden administration, where we try to use
the New York Stock Exchange on our public lands, a conservation
easement across there. Are you really for that, or are you----
Mr. Painter. I haven't looked at that specific instance you
are speaking of.
Dr. Gosar. Well, you were so anti about foreign investors.
Here is your sign right now. This is a perfect scenario. This
should never happen because, really, the states are next in
line, and the American people. It is not a Federal Government
across the world. Would you agree?
Now, the gentleman, Mr. O'Neil, would you agree?
Mr. O'Neil. Would I agree that the American people make the
decision? Yes.
Dr. Gosar. And what did you think about this amortization
of Federal lands?
Mr. O'Neil. Yes, I think it is a really harebrained idea,
and it will abuse the lands that are held in trust by the
American people.
And what we are seeing here is an attempt to weaponize the
value in those lands, to change our financial system, and to
make it so that these green activist groups are able to upend
capitalism and turn it into a weapon of their environmental
agenda.
Dr. Gosar. Mr. Walter, would you agree with that
assessment?
Mr. Walter. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it is obvious in all
these things that multiple sides and interests need to be taken
into account and weighed rationally.
Dr. Gosar. Now, I guess this will be my last question. What
was the question that you wish was asked today, and what is its
answer?
I will start with you, Mr. Walter.
What wasn't asked, the question wasn't asked.
Mr. Walter. Well, I think one of them would be to ask about
the ocean, the article that was mentioned in the news yesterday
with the ocean subagency of Interior.
First of all, again, with the reporter, the refusal to have
honest, rational debate, right? They won't speak to the
reporter to discuss what they have done.
And the other thing that is valuable there is that one of
the groups involved was the Ocean Conservancy, which I note has
paid millions of dollars to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's wife,
interestingly, which would raise ethics questions if the Senate
had a rule saying you can't do things that benefit your
spouse's employer.
Dr. Gosar. Mr. Painter, what was the question that didn't
get asked that you wish was asked, and what is its answer?
Mr. Painter. The question would be whether the Office of
Government Ethics covered relationship rule, which you cited, 5
CFR 2635.502, should be expanded not only to cover particular
party matters in which one's previous employer is a party or
represents a party, but also regulatory matters, and whether
such a change should be embodied in Federal statute.
If Congress were to enact such a change, that would mean
that the Interior Department and other public officials who
come to Washington from their previous employers, whether they
be the Wilderness Society, Goldman Sachs, or Shell Oil, would
not participate in regulation or de-regulation of the industry
in which their previous employers engage. This would be a
fundamental change to ethics in government.
I believe there are many good arguments for it, but you
will get a lot of pushback, predominantly from industry groups,
perhaps from environmental groups, as well, that such a change
in ethics rules might make it more difficult for the government
to hire, bring in senior officials with the needed expertise.
But I have seen way, way too much influence on Washington
coming from the previous employers of high-ranking Federal
officials, presidential appointees who come for 2 or 3 years,
and then they go right back on out into the private sector.
And yes, some of them may go to environmental groups, as
well. I believe this influence is excessive, and is detrimental
to the American people, and that we need to give serious
consideration to whether to expand the scope of the conflict of
interest rules of the Office of Government Ethics, the very
ones that you cited in 5 Code of Federal Regulation 2635.502.
Dr. Gosar. Thank you, Mr. Painter.
Mr. O'Neil?
Mr. O'Neil. I would say the question I would like to have
seen asked, with all due respect to everyone who asked, is how
broad exactly is this far-left infiltration of the Department
of the Interior under President Biden?
And I can count at least six organizations that really set
my radar off: the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife
Federation, the Pueblo Action Alliance, the Wilderness Society,
Earth Justice, and, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I think we need to have more of a discussion of exactly how
many of these groups are using sue-and-settle to achieve their
policies in this Administration. And I have been glad to see a
lot of that exposed today.
Dr. Gosar. Yes, you bring up kind of an interesting point.
If there are collusive ideas in regards to legislation being
introduced and then an Executive Order coming over and taking
that exact language and putting it in an Executive Order--and
it is on both sides of the aisle, I have seen this on both
sides. I just want to make sure that we are not exempting the
behavior of those folks.
Thank you very much. I want to thank the witnesses for
their valuable testimony today and the Members for their
questions.
The members of the Committee may have some additional
questions for you, and we will ask you to respond to those in
writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of the Committee must
submit their questions to the Subcommittee Clerk by 5 p.m. on
May 3. The hearing record will be held open for 10 business
days for these responses.
If there is no further business, we are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[ADDITIONAL MATERIALS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD]
Submissions for the Record by Rep. Stansbury
United States Department of the Interior
OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR
August 9, 2023
Hon. Bruce Westerman, Chairman
Committee on Natural Resources
1324 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairman Westerman:
Thank you for your letter dated June 5, 2023, signed by you and
Republican Members of the Committee, regarding Secretary of the
Interior Deb Haaland's compliance with her ethics obligations. In
addition to a response from the Department of the Interior (Department)
providing documents under separate cover, Secretary Haaland asked that
I also respond on her behalf and provide further information about the
Departmental Ethical Office (DEO) and her efforts to comply with her
personal ethics obligations.
Within the Department, the DEO in the Office of the Solicitor
undertakes important work to enhance ethics compliance and prevent
conflicts of interest throughout the Department. The DEO provides
ethics guidance to all Department employees through ethics training,
the collection and review of financial disclosure reports, and the
provision of advice and counsel to employees on questions related to
their ethics obligations under applicable laws and regulations.
In one of her first actions, Secretary Haaland sent a message to
all Department employees highlighting her participation in ethics
training, noting that the Department's ethics officials serve as a
valued resource, and encouraging employees to consult with the DEO
regarding their own ethics obligations. As the DEO's staffing has
increased in recent years, a more robust DEO is helping the Department
to ensure personnel, programs, and operations comply with critically
important ethics laws and regulations. The DEO's goal is to build one
of the finest ethics programs in the Federal government and to ensure
the personnel, policies, and resources are firmly in place to maintain
it for future generations of the Department's employees.
As a nominee to a Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed (PAS)
position, Secretary Haaland worked closely with the Biden/Harris
Transition Team, the DEO, and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to
complete her nominee ethics materials, including a Nominee OGE Form
278e, Public Financial Disclosure Report, and an ethics agreement.
After being confirmed by the Senate on March 15, 2021, Secretary
Haaland signed the Ethics Pledge implemented by Executive Order No.
13989, titled ``Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive
Branch Personnel,'' on March 17, 2021.
Also on March 17, 2021, Secretary Haaland attended an initial
ethics training and a senior leader ethics briefing required for PAS
officials. The goal of this training was to provide Secretary Haaland
with an overview of applicable ethics laws and regulations and to
provide a foundation for her to use when assessing her ethics
obligations. In addition to formal ethics trainings, Secretary Haaland
regularly meets with senior ethics officials in the Department to
discuss ethics issues and questions.
On April 14, 2021, Secretary Haaland signed an Ethics Recusals &
Screening Arrangement memorandum. This memorandum documented the steps
that she agreed to undertake to meet her personal ethics obligations
and formally identified both staff and a process to assist her in
meeting those obligations. A second Ethics Recusals & Screening
Agreement memorandum was signed on October 26, 2021, following her
marriage to Mr. Skip Sayre. After the submission of her annual OGE Form
278e, Public Financial Disclosure Report, Secretary Haaland signed a
third Ethics Recusals & Screening Arrangement memorandum on May 18,
2022. Secretary Haaland has neither sought nor been granted any waivers
of her ethics obligations.
After the Secretary married Mr. Sayre, Mr. Sayre provided the DEO
with information regarding his employment, other positions, and
investments. The DEO used this information to determine the scope of
the Secretary's new recusals under applicable ethics laws. Mr. Sayre
has also provided information to the DEO for the Secretary's annual OGE
Form 278e, Public Financial Disclosure Reports, and on his potential
new employment or clients.
Although your letter requested information about the Secretary's
disclosures regarding Somah Haaland, it is important to note that Somah
is the adult non-dependent child of Secretary Haaland. Somah is not
employed by the Department and is not otherwise a federal employee and
is thus not covered by the ethics laws and rules which govern Executive
Branch employees. Nevertheless, when the DEO was made aware of Somah's
employment by the Pueblo Action Alliance, the DEO considered that
information as part of the ethics review of any meeting, event, or
travel attended or completed by the Secretary where the Pueblo Action
Alliance was identified as a participant and when appropriate provided
specific guidance.
Based on the information provided to the DEO, the Secretary does
not have any direct or imputed financial interests under 18 U.S.C.
Sec. 208 with her child or her child's employer. Accordingly, Secretary
Haaland was not required to disclose her child's employment and other
business relationships on her Nominee OGE Form 278e, Public Financial
Disclosure Report, or on her subsequent annual OGE Form 278e, Public
Financial Disclosure Reports. Additionally, it is the understanding of
the DEO that the Secretary's child is not currently a member of her
household and the Secretary therefore does not have a ``covered
relationship'' as defined in 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(b) with the Pueblo
Action Alliance.
Although the DEO determined that the Secretary's child' s
employment with the Pueblo Action Alliance does not trigger the recusal
requirements in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 208 or 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502(a), the
Secretary--like all other employees of the Department--is tasked by the
Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch with
considering whether she believes that her participation in any
particular matter would raise questions regarding her impartiality even
when there is not a required recusal. In making such a consideration,
as reflected in 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502, if the Secretary personally
determines that a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant
facts would not question her impartiality in performing her official
duties in the particular matter, then she may participate in the
particular matter as part of her official duties. To date, it is my
understanding that the Secretary has not determined that a recusal
under 5 C.F.R. Sec. 2635.502 is appropriate as a result of her child's
employment.
I hope that the information above, as well as the documents
produced by the Department under separate cover, provide the requested
information on the steps that Secretary Haaland has taken to comply
with her personal ethics obligations, and the ways that the DEO has
worked to support her in those efforts. Our goal in the DEO is to
ensure that all employees have the information and resources that they
need to comply with all applicable ethics laws and regulations. The
DEO, through its committed staff of career ethics professionals, stand
ready to assist employees with questions about how to best meet their
personal ethics obligations.
Thank you for contacting me and I appreciate your interest in the
work of the Departmental Ethics Office. Should you have additional
questions, please feel free to contact Perrin Cooke in the Office of
Congressional and Legislative Affairs at [email protected].
Sincerely,
Heather C. Gottry,
Director, Departmental Ethics Office
& Designated Agency Ethics Official
______
United States Department of the Interior
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
February 2, 2024
Hon. Bruce Westerman, Chairman
Committee on Natural Resources
1324 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairman Westerman:
This letter responds to your October 23, 2023, letter addressed to
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and the Department of the
Interior's Designated Agency Ethics Official and Director of the
Departmental Ethics Office (DEO) Heather Gottry, which was cosigned by
Representative Paul Gosar, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee, that seeks additional documents and information related
to ethics compliance at the Department.
In August 2023, the Department provided both a written response
and, under separate cover, documents that were responsive to your
initial June 5, 2023, request in this matter. The Department has not
identified any further materials that were responsive to the
Committee's previous requests from that time. As discussed below, with
this letter we are providing the Committee with documents responsive to
this new request. In addition, we are continuing to search for
potentially responsive material.
At the outset, we note that your October letter makes a number of
assertions about the Pueblo Action Alliance (PAA). The Department
cannot speak to these claims, but we do voice overall support for
Americans' First Amendment rights to participate in public debate,
civic life, and to petition their government. This letter responds to
the statements and requests by the Committee regarding matters most
related to the Department' s responsibilities.
In doing so, we found several incorrect or inaccurate
characterizations in your letter. From the first days of her nomination
to be Secretary, Secretary Haaland has made clear her commitment to
leading the Department ethically and with honor and integrity. As one
of her first acts, Secretary Haaland sent a message to all Departmental
employees highlighting her participation in ethics training and
encouraging Department employees to consult with the DEO on their
ethics obligations.
As a Senate-confirmed official, Secretary Haaland has fully
committed to following all applicable ethics laws, regulations, and the
ethics pledge. She has actively sought and consulted with the DEO for
ethics advice and has put in place a robust screening process to help
ensure that she does not participate in matters relating to any of the
individuals or entities listed in her Ethics Recusals & Screening
Arrangement. The Department's August 2023 Response to your earlier
letter laid out the relevant ethics guidelines and process that the
Secretary continues to follow. As of this date, Secretary Haaland has
neither sought nor been granted any waivers of her ethics obligations.
The Department's review of scheduling to date indicates only a few
limited engagements relevant to your questions. In one case, Secretary
Haaland provided pre-recorded remarks at a virtual event where several
hundred people were invited, including a member of PAA. The Department
was not made aware of the event's final attendee list and cannot
confirm if the individual attended virtually. In another case, a member
of PAA was one of approximately 15 individuals invited to attend an
Environmental Justice roundtable in 2022 in the State of New Mexico
where Secretary Haaland was a virtual participant due to COVID. The
individual from PAA did not attend the event. Documents regarding these
engagements are included in the production accompanying this letter.
Other encounters with the PAA, such as the ones cited in your
letter, include ceremonial and large group events such as the
Secretary's swearing in as the first Native American cabinet Secretary,
the delivery of a totem pole by Native groups to the Department, and in
her congressional office before she was confirmed as Secretary of the
Interior. Along with many other attendees, PAA members also joined
widely attended events that the Secretary participated in regarding
conservation of landscape around Chaco Canyon Historical Park.
Regarding the film featuring Chaco Canyon referenced in your
letter, Secretary Haaland's appearance in that film pre-dated her time
as Secretary. During her time in Congress, then-Representative Haaland,
along with all the other members of the New Mexico delegation, were
active on legislative activities related to the protection of the
natural and cultural resources in the Chaco Canyon area. As Secretary,
she was subsequently invited to attend a screening of this film but did
not attend. Furthermore, while Secretary, she did not take steps to
promote the film, and, in fact, the Department took active steps to
ensure that ethics guidelines were followed appropriately.
As noted above, we are enclosing to this letter documents that are
responsive to your October 2023 letter, which include an updated Ethics
Recusal's & Screening Arrangements signed August 17, 2023 (though
erroneously dated August 17, 2022) and other responsive documents.
If you or your staff needs any additional assistance regarding this
production, please contact me [email protected].
Sincerely,
Andrew Wallace,
Director, Office of Congressional
and Legislative Affairs
[all]