06.05.26

Huffman, Dexter Expose USDA Official’s Conflicts of Interest as GOP Chairman Shuts Down Ethics Question

The scandal lands as Trump's cuts leave the Forest Service gutted heading into a dangerous fire season

Washington, D.C. – At a Federal Lands Subcommittee oversight hearing yesterday, Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) pressed Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz on Under Secretary Michael Boren's conflicts of interest and the advisors with personal ties to Boren now embedded in agency leadership.

When Democrats laid out evidence that one of those advisors may have misled federal ethics officials, Subcommittee Chairman Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) intervened to stop the chief from answering.

Boren, the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, oversees the Forest Service. His ethics agreement requires him to stay away from matters involving the Sawtooth Conservation and Recreation Alliance, a private property rights group of wealthy landowners that he helped found and that has clashed repeatedly with the agency over his Sawtooth National Forest properties. The point of that rule is simple: a public official should not make decisions that put themselves before the American people.

In his opening statement, Huffman said the administration is following the President's playbook of corruption. He said Boren “appears to have planted his own yes men in the agency to give him a clear path to influencing decisions that impact his own properties in the Sawtooth National Forest,” and that “despite ethics guidance, he has used his wealth to silence his detractors by relaunching a dormant SLAPP suit against two seniors for having the audacity to speak out” against a controversial airstrip he built within the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. against his unpermitted airstrip in a national forest years ago.”

Under questioning, Huffman asked Schultz directly whether he and Boren had ever discussed the Sawtooth National Forest. Schultz conceded they had, telling the subcommittee, “It's possible that we have. I can't say for certain that we haven't... we definitely talked about Sawtooth before he came into this job.”

Dexter pressed the chief on the advisors now shaping the agency from the inside, noting that the Forest Service has forced out experienced scientists while installing political appointees with personal connections to Boren, including a senior advisor who is Boren's neighbor and a member of the same organization Boren is barred from working with. Schultz confirmed that three of his advisors have personal connections to Boren, though he maintained they report to him rather than to the Undersecretary.

Dexter then moved to enter four documents into the record: Boren's ethics recusal, two ethics documents for fellow SCRA leader Ken Verheyen, and an annual report filed with the Idaho Secretary of State on May 8, 2026. Together, the documents show that Verheyen told USDA ethics officials that his SCRA leadership ended in September 2025, which left his ethics guidance silent on the group, while the Idaho filing eight months later still listed him as a director. Both cannot be true. Democrats asked Schultz to commit to determining which one and reporting back within a week. Lying to a federal ethics official violates federal law and can carry criminal penalties.

Before the chief could answer, Chairman Tiffany cut in, declared the question out of order, and told Schultz he did not have to respond. The documents were entered into the record, and the chairman moved to close the hearing.

Background

Over the past year, the Trump administration has moved on several fronts that weaken the Forest Service and put the lands it protects at risk. President Trump is rescinding the 2001 Roadless Rule, opening nearly 59 million acres of national forest to logging and new road construction, a giveaway his Agriculture Secretary announced last June. His administration moved to hand the Superior National Forest watershed next to the Boundary Waters to a foreign mining company, tearing up protections that took years of science and public input to build, and Congressional Republicans cleared the way by ramming a resolution through the House and Senate. And the administration is forcing through a reorganization that shutters research facilities and relocates the agency's headquarters to Salt Lake City.

The damage falls hardest on the communities that depend on these forests. Under Trump, the agency has shed roughly a quarter of its workforce since the start of 2025. It treated about 35% fewer acres for hazardous fuels in 2025 than the year before, the brush-clearing work that keeps fires away from homes, even as forecasters warn 2026 could be one of the worst fire years on record. Republicans spent the hearing praising these moves while families across fire country are left with a weaker agency heading into a dangerous summer.


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