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The House Natural Resources Committee asked the justice department to investigate a “likely quid pro quo” arrangement involving then-Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and an Arizona real estate developer. The criminal referral is a first for the committee, which uncovered $241,000 in coordinated donations from associates of developer Mike Ingram to the Trump Victory Fund and Republican National Committee.
The donations came in as the Interior Department reversed its long-standing position that Ingram's proposed Villages at Vigneto mega-development would require a full-scale analysis of its impacts on the San Pedro River and protected species. The author of that decision, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisor Steve Spangle, later turned whistleblower and revealed that he had been “rolled” by Interior officials.
“The findings of this investigation show us yet again that the previous administration cast career staff expertise aside while they handed out federal agency decisions to Trump’s buddies and big donors on a pay-to-play basis,” Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva said in a statement.
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, added that CWP “said all along that David Bernhardt was too compromised and too corrupt to be a cabinet secretary.”
Lease sales cancelled in Alaska, Gulf of Mexico
The Interior Department announced it would not move forward with planned oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska's Cook Inlet this year. The Alaska sale was called off due to insufficient interest from the oil and gas industry, while offshore sales for the rest of the year were pulled due to contradictory court rulings. The previous offshore sale was thrown out by a judge because the Interior Department failed to consider how the leases could impact global climate change.
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This is not new…to many of us as Indigenous people. We have lived with the intergenerational trauma of federal Indian Boarding School policies for many years. We must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past. Today is a critical step forward in that work.”
