09.02.20

As Trump’s Interior Department Tries Unsuccessfully to Spin Ethics Record, Natural Resources Committee Highlights Three-Plus Years of Scandals

Washington, D.C. – The House Natural Resources Committee majority released a new review of the Trump Interior Department’s history of scandals, conflicts of interest, formal investigations and ethical lapses today in a Medium post underlining Secretary David Bernhardt’s complete failure to control the sometimes illegal behavior of his subordinates. The review comes after the Interior Department attempted to brag in a press release earlier this week about the strength of its ethics training.

The Committee review points out that even after former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke left the administration having been referred to the Department of Justice, scandals and ethical lapses continued unabated under Bernhardt, his successor since early 2019. Grijalva called on Zinke to resign in 2018 in a USA Today op-ed.

“The people who run this administration hear the word ethics and think it’s for suckers,” said Chair Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) today. “The president and his allies are taking everything they can from our country and leaving as little behind as possible. The Trump Interior Department is defined by scandals and conflicts of interest, which is what you get when you put corporate lobbyists and corporate officers in charge of the public trust. A better, more honest government is possible, but we won’t have it until we get rid of this president and stop mistaking big polluter profits with the good of the nation.”

The full review is available at https://bit.ly/34WzNLZ.

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