Huffman Blasts Trump Scheme to Plant Project 2025 Architect Inside Interior's Watchdog Office

Washington, D.C. – Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released the following statement after reports that the Trump administration installed Dennis Kirk, a lead architect of Project 2025, inside the Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General:

“Dennis Kirk is a fake and fraudulent watchdog. Everyone should have their eyes wide open. Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump.

“This man helped write the Project 2025 playbook for seizing control of the federal workforce. Now he sits inside the office charged with rooting out corruption at Interior, the department that manages our national parks, public lands, Tribal programs, and now under Trump, gold-slathered statues and a botched Reflecting Pool renovation. That same office is weighing serious ethics investigations into senior officials in this administration. It’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump's cronies still have reason to fear.

“Trump is running the most corrupt presidency in American history, and he's working overtime to make sure no one is left to hold him accountable. He fired the real watchdogs, tried to gut their budgets, and now he's stuffing his own political operatives into the offices built to investigate his administration’s wrongdoing.

“Congress built the inspector general system after Watergate because we learned the hard way what happens when a president polices himself. Trump is tearing that system down brick by brick while he buries the Epstein files and lets his billionaire donors pillage taxpayer dollars for their own profit.

“This is a fraud on the office and a fraud on the American people. Democrats will fight to restore independent oversight and hold every official who abuses the public’s trust accountable.”

Background

This Congress, Natural Resources Committee Democrats have repeatedly called on the Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate suspected ethics violations and self-dealing by senior Trump administration officials. Ranking Member Huffman and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) have requested formal OIG investigations into three high-ranking Interior officials: Deputy Assistant Secretary Jenifer Chatfield, for participating in matters benefiting her family's captive wildlife business; Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen, for her family's $3.5 million windfall tied to a Nevada lithium mine her office helped approve; and Acting BOEM Director Matthew Giacona, for engaging on the same issues he lobbied on for a Big Oil trade association.

These requests followed Trump's unlawful late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general in January 2025, which Huffman and fellow ranking members condemned as a violation of federal law.

IG requests and related actions this Congress:

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