US House lawmakers were quick to throw jabs across the aisle during an oversight hearing on potential conflicts of interest and undue influence on decision-making at the Interior Department, drawing a scolding April 30 from a former White House ethics lawyer to stop bickering and instead pass legislation to fix the problems.
With such a vast amount of power over so much land, Interior "has been a source of corruption for over a century" under presidents of Republican and Democratic administrations, Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005-2007, said at a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee's oversight and investigations panel..
Painter, now a professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, told the panel, "It's 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."
The hearing centered on Republicans' concerns that Interior under President Joe Biden has gotten too cozy with radical environmental groups to the detriment of domestic oil and gas production as well as mining. Witnesses testifying referred to the Pueblo Action Alliance and the Wilderness Society as radicals engaged in environmental extremism. The heads of those groups declined to attend and participate in the hearing.
'Improper relationships'
Subcommittee Chairman Paul Gosar, Republican-Arizona, said that "close and potentially improper relationships" with these groups could be swaying Interior's decisions and rulemakings, including the moratorium on new oil and natural gas leasing around the Chaco Canyon area in New Mexico and a mining moratorium on acres in the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota that included the site of the copper-nickel Maturi project proposed by Twin Metals Minnesota, a unit of Antofagasta.
Gosar flagged Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's ties to the Pueblo Action Alliance, which advocated for the Chaco withdrawal, and an off-the-books meeting between Interior officials and lobbyists for the Wilderness Society, which was fighting the Twin Metals project in court.
Republicans at the hearing also brought up dark money believed to fund extreme environmental groups and foreign interference in government appointments and policymaking.
Democrats called the hearing "political theater" and highlighted the numerous investigations and criminal referrals involving Interior during the Trump-era, including instances of influence peddling, ethical violations, and corruption.
"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," Representative Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said.
"Yet here we find ourselves today at a hearing where my [Republican] colleagues are trying to manufacture a scandal tying Secretary Haaland to environmental groups," Stansbury continued. "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."
Ethics rules
Painter, during the hearing, contended that the corruption plaguing the department has involved the oil and gas sector, mining companies, real estate developers and "others seeking access to federal lands on terms favorable to themselves and detrimental to the public interest."
He added that it was "conceivable that environmental groups also will seek access to [Interior] through improper and illegal means, and I want to emphasize it's critically important that the same rules apply to everybody, whether it's industry or an environmental group." Though he quipped that worrying about environmental groups taking over Interior was akin to worrying about pacifists taking over the Department of Defense – "perhaps it will happen someday but that's not where we are now."
Painter called for a tightening of ethics rules to crack down on former government officials and staffers that take new jobs with industry, or even environmental groups, and then continue to have conversations on regulatory matters.
"Previous employees have far more influence on a federal agency than other people and that should be prohibited across the board in the federal government," he said. The gifts, free rides on private jets and other "shindigs" afforded government officials that "are hobnobbing with outside special interests" also need to stop through revisions to the ethics rules, he said.
Painter also pushed for more disclosure of foreign funding sources, and said enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act has "been very haphazard." He called on Congress to revisit that statute to beef up enforcement and make amendments clarifying who is and is not covered and which activities must be disclosed.
"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," Painter said. "I'm 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."