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William Perry Pendley, the head of the Bureau of Land Management who was recently removed by a federal judge for violating the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, claimed on Thursday that he's still running the bureau.
"I have not been ousted. That is not true," Pendley told the Casper Star-Tribune. Earlier this week, Pendley told another Wyoming paper, the Powell Tribune, that the judge's order “has no impact, no impact whatsoever.”
Pendley's statements not only defy the order issued by Judge Brian Morris, who ruled that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt could not use “a matryoshka doll of delegated authorities” to evade the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, but appear to contradict the secretary himself. An email sent to BLM staff late last month said that the department would comply with the court order, and that "Bernhardt leads the bureau."
Pendley's defiance could put the Trump administration's land management actions in even more legal jeopardy. A coalition of 60 conservation groups have already listed dozens of land use plans and regulations that could be nullified because they were approved with Pendley in charge.
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What a tangled web they have woven. All they had to do was get someone appointed and confirmed, and they chose to skirt the Constitution and the law. And there are going to be consequences.”
