Happy Monday! Today, we bring you a few updates from DC’s increasingly swampy swamp.
InsideEPA reports that sources within the agency think Pruitt could be using his gig as a stepping stone to a higher-profile elected position, like senator or governor. This would line up with what an unnamed “insider” told James Delingpole back in March (right around the time David Schnare resigned in a huff…) about Pruitt’s lack of commitment to Trump’s agenda.
According to the story, EPA staffers are starting to think of Pruitt as a “short-timer” who won’t be around for all that long. Given the gossip that Trump doesn’t appreciate anyone else using his brand to promote themselves, combined with his increasingly foul mood and propensity to randomly fire people, we’re entertaining a fleeting hope that Pruitt gets the boot.
But even a Pruitt ousting wouldn’t solve our problems.. Last week’s confirmation hearing for the number two position at the Department of Interior showed that as the administration continues to staff up, they’re just going deeper into the swamp. Nominee David “walking conflict of interest” Bernhardt comes with plenty of baggage from lobbying on behalf of polluters during the Obama years. As a bonus, Bernhardt also has experience in doing industry’s dirty work from within the government, thanks to his time in the Interior during the George W. Bush administration.
These conflicts of interest are hardly speculative. In addition to having sued the DOI, Bernhardt’s lobby shop owns 200,000 shares in a company (Cadiz) that needs agency permission to pipe water out of an aquifer beneath the Mojave Desert. If Interior gives the project a thumbs up, which signs now indicate it will, then Bernhardt’s firm gets an additional 200,000 in shares.
And although he does have some experience in the department, it’s not exactly the kind of experience most would want. A decade ago, a bunch of Minerals Management Service employees accepted lavish gifts, did cocaine and had sex with representatives of the oil and gas industry. During Bernhardt’s tenure as the department’s top ethics official, its inspector general reported to Congress that there was a “culture of ethical failure” as Bernhardt’s employees literally got in bed with the industry they regulated.
It’s more than just sex and drugs. In 2001 as the director of the DOI’s Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, Bernhardt was reportedly responsible for rewriting a section of a congressional testimony that replaced government scientist’s warnings about the impact on caribou herds of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with a report funded by BP.
So we know exactly what he really meant when he told Senator Al Franken on Thursday that regardless of what the science says about an issue like climate change, “we're absolutely going to follow the policy perspective of the president.”
Trump promised to hire the best people, and drain the swamp of special interest groups. But apparently he got that backwards. He’s hired the swampy special interests, and drained DC of some of its best people.
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