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david bernhardt
Campaign Against Corporate Complicity Cautions Previous Lobbying Firm and Clients of Former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt
Former Interior Secretary may look to cash in on Trump experience and return to corporate lobbying.
Feb 10, 2021
Today, government watchdogs Accountable.US and American Oversight called on former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt's previous lobbying firm -- and its clients -- to carefully scrutinize Bernhardt's time in the Trump administration if he seeks to return to his lobbying career. The groups sent the letter as part of their Campaign Against Corporate Complicity, an effort to prevent the normalization of the Trump administration's anti-democratic and inhumane policies by ensuring that companies thoroughly vet any former officials who come looking for jobs.
In the letter to more than 200 principals, partners, shareholders, and clients of the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck, where Bernhardt was a prominent energy and extractive industries lobbyist prior to joining the Trump administration, the watchdog groups specifically cited his role in spreading misinformation about the June 2020 assault on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.
The letter states:
"Bernhardt's continued refusal to acknowledge basic facts and his penchant for dishonesty underscores his willingness to cover up and deflect the truth in blind support of Trump. You and your colleagues should think carefully about whether you want to associate with--to entrust your brand to--someone with that reputation. You should further consider whether hiring Bernhardt would reward his lies with your business and whether you want to send the signal to the public (and your clients or customers) that the abuses of power he enabled and the lies he told were not only acceptable but laudable. You can do better."
In his role as Interior secretary, Bernhardt oversaw the U.S. Park Police, one of the agencies involved in using chemical munitions to expel peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square moments before President Donald Trump walked through the park to stage a photo opportunity in front of a nearby church. Following the incident, Bernhardt continued to publicly deny that tear gas was used on the protesters, contributing to the Trump administration's misinformation campaign even after a police spokesperson acknowledged the facts.
The letter also highlights reports that under Bernhardt's leadership, Interior interfered with transparency rules for political purposes.
Bernhardt entered government service under a cloud of ethics concerns given his background as a lobbyist, and faced repeated ethics questions and investigations during his time in office. Documents released via FOIA appeared to show that Bernhardt--who reportedly had to carry a card listing all of his potential conflicts of interest--used taxpayer funds to travel to a conference involving former clients, despite having been given contrary internal ethics advice.
Having gotten his administration job through Washington's revolving door, it might be expected he will seek his next position in the same way, returning to his perch at a major lobbying outfit pedaling influence to lawmakers and officials. But Bernhardt served an aberrant administration and built a record of putting politics and allegiance to former President Trump above the interests of the American people and democracy. Bernhardt will carry his reputation into the future. His former employer and clients should think twice about reemploying him as their representative.
The Campaign Against Corporate Complicity seeks to prevent normalizing the cruel and undemocratic actions and rhetoric of the Trump administration by ensuring that companies scrutinize former officials looking to sell their government experience as a qualification rather than a disgrace.
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Turns Out That the Oil Industry Wasn't Interested in the Arctic Refuge After All
The Trump administration’s Arctic Refuge oil lease auction was a total bust.
Jan 15, 2021
On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 6--as many Americans were transfixed by the violent insurrectionists laying siege to the US Capitol--the Department of the Interior was undertaking what some conservationists have likened to another kind of plunder: the first ever oil and gas lease sale in one of North America's most iconic wilderness landscapes.
For more than 40 years, environmentalists and Republicans in Congress have battled over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain, a 1.6 million-acre stretch of fragile tundra at the edge of the Arctic sea. In 2017, with a two-page provision tucked into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Donald Trump achieved what no other Republican president had been able to: opening up the refuge to oil and gas exploration and development. The lease sale was, in a way, the culmination of one of the defining environmental struggles of the last half-century.
Not surprisingly, the Trump administration considered Arctic Refuge drilling among its biggest accomplishments, as Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. The Alaska Congressional delegation viewed it as a major triumph. Industry boosters and the Congressional Budget Office claimed that the lease sales--the Tax Act requires two over the course of the next decade--would be a windfall for the US Treasury and the state of Alaska and that it would help to replenish the dwindling life-blood of the Trans Alaska Pipeline.
But, ultimately, the first lease sale was a flop. Only half of the parcels attracted a bid, many of them at bare minimum prices. The Alaska Wilderness League called the lease auction an "epic failure."
Even before last Wednesday's sale, there were signs that this idea was largely a fantasy. In 2019 British Petroleum sold off all of its assets on the North Slope, including the closely guarded results of the single test well drilled on refuge lands, in what many viewed as a sign of the inevitable long-term decline of Alaska's oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, more than a dozen banks in the US, Canada, and Europe pledged not to finance development projects in the Arctic. The rush to lease in the refuge was unfolding without a very clear understanding of the coastal plain's resource potential, making any investment that much more risky. To top it all off, Joe Biden's presidential election victory ensured that the incoming administration would do everything in its power to protect the region.
That's where things stood when DOI's Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor, who had traveled to Anchorage for the lease sale, approached the lectern and began opening bids. "It is my honor to preside over this momentous occasion," she said before thanking those who had worked for decades to promote domestic energy production and job creation in Alaska.
But in less than ten minutes the sale was over. There were only 13 bids on 11 of 22 tracts. Most bids were at or just above the minimum of $25/acre and the sale netted only $14.4 million, a far cry from what the CBO had estimated. Even the pro-industry website Petroleum News described the results as "somewhat disappointing."
Perhaps most surprising and controversial was that nearly all of the bids--9 of the 11 awarded--were submitted by a state-owned investment corporation, not the oil and gas industry. The Alaska Investment Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) was created by the state legislature in 1967 to help foster economic growth largely by partnering with banks to provide low cost loans to businesses. Board members are appointed by the governor and profits are pumped back into the corporation or shared with the state. In recent years, however, AIDEA has come under fire for its lack of transparency and what many view as ill-advised investments in energy development projects.
The decision to bid on refuge leases was no exception. AIDEA made a cryptic announcement on Friday, December 18 that it would be meeting in executive session two days before Christmas to discuss "confidential matters" and vote on a resolution related to the Arctic Infrastructure Development Fund. The following Monday, under pressure from activists and journalists, AIDEA finally released the resolution on whether to spend up to $20 million on the lease sale. Despite an outpouring of criticism from the public, it passed unanimously.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has always been a larger than life symbol, both to the environmentalists and Indigenous Gwich'in who have sought to protect it and the politicians who have tried for decades to open it to development.
Rick Steiner, a conservation biologist in Anchorage who tracks AIDEA closely, believes that the authority not only violated Alaska's public meeting law by not providing proper notice but also may not qualify as an eligible bidder. Because the state of Alaska receives half of the lease sale revenue, AIDEA has a competitive advantage, Steiner says. In addition the authority has presented no clear investment plan for the leases, which Steiner says is required by the corporation's own by-laws. Finally, the authority's board members have not been confirmed by the Alaska legislature adding another layer of legal uncertainty.
"AIDEA is clearly out of control," Steiner told me. "And they know it." Steiner filed a complaint with the Department of the Interior's inspector general in December alleging that the corporation is an ineligible bidder under federal law and that all of its bids should be rejected. According to Steiner, the inspector general's office has told him that they are hoping to issue a decision or referral before the end of this week.
A spokesperson with the Inspector General's office said the complaint is going through the standard intake process. AIDEA did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management is moving quickly to finalize the leases before Trump leaves office, which would make it more difficult for the incoming administration to delay or possibly invalidate them. An antitrust review coordinated with DOJ, and which usually takes up to two months, has been completed in just days according to an email obtained by Steiner and bid acceptance letters were sent out last week. AIDEA has 15 days to respond.
Larry Persily, who served on the AIDEA board from 1999 to 2002 and now owns a weekly print newspaper in Wrangell, said that bidding on refuge leases is not the first bad investment AIDEA has made. He points to the authority's decision in the late 1990s to finance a "value added" seafood processing plant in Anchorage that went bust. AIDEA ended up losing about half of the $50 million it had invested in the project. "That was their biggest boondoggle I can remember," Persily said. "It definitely gave them a black eye."
More recently, the authority put $70 million into financing a North Slope oil and gas operation, since purchased by a Singapore-based petroleum company, which has struggled to make its quarterly loan payments. They agency has also been criticized (and sued) for backing the Ambler Road project, a more than 200-mile mining access road through pristine wilderness lands including part of Gates of the Arctic National Park. Two days after the lease sale, AIDEA and DOI signed a 50-year right-of-way permit for the project.
"The [Arctic Refuge] thing was sort of their sticking their toe back into the waters of dumb ideas," Persily said.
Even if AIDEA is deemed to be an eligible bidder and the leases are signed before Biden takes office, the path forward for the state of Alaska is not a promising one. The leasing program will be tied up in courts for months if not years and a judge could send DOI back to square one, forcing the agency to redo the environmental impact statement. In theory a Democratic controlled Congress could vote to permanently protect the coastal plain, though the party's slim majority in the Senate will make this difficult. (See: Manchin, Joe; Senator from West Virginia.) Either way, AIDEA will be stuck with the leases and ultimately the legal fees required if they challenge whatever decisions the Biden administration makes.
It would be foolish to read too much into a single lease sale, held during a pandemic and at a time of historically low oil and gas prices. After all there's plenty of new oil and gas development on Alaska's North Slope, much of it on state land and to the west of the refuge in the National Petroleum Reserve.
But the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has always been a larger than life symbol, both to the environmentalists and Indigenous Gwich'in who have sought to protect it and the politicians who have tried for decades to open it to development. How badly industry wanted it, however, was always a bit of a mystery. Now, it seems, we have our answer: industry didn't want it very much.
During the livestreaming of the lease sale, DOI's MacGregor said that developing the refuge would "reinvigorate" the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which Alaska's politicians have long promised. But the outcome of the sale presages a different future, one that by necessity doesn't rely so heavily on oil and gas extraction. And this is something the state may have no control over.
"If they had held the sale 20 years ago it would have turned out much differently," Persily said. "Regardless of whether it was a good idea then, its time has passed."
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Former Oil Lobbyist-Turned Interior Secretary to Ignore Judges Ruling on Sage-Grouse Rollbacks
Bernhardt continues to prioritize big oil and gas special interests despite pandemic and calls for invoking the 25th amendment.
Jan 12, 2021
Earlier this week, Trump's Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management indicated that the administration's final sage-grouse habitat rollbacks done at the behest of Big Oil and Gas special interests are complete -- despite a district judge's order to provide further analysis and justification for the moves based on the best available science. The rollbacks are set to ease protections in critical greater sage-grouse habitat on public lands across seven Western states for industrial oil and gas drilling and mining interests.
"Absent reasonable justifications and sound science, self-proclaimed sophisticated natural resource lawyer and former oil lobbyist turned-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former industry front-group lawyer leading the BLM, William Pendley, appear to be completely ignoring the court rulings at a great cost to American taxpayers and our wildlife. The legal morass and regulatory uncertainty created by these conflicted Trump officials are an utter disservice to our public lands," said Jayson O'Neill, Western Values Project director.
The announcement by Interior and the Bureau of Land of Management (BLM) claimed 'that no further land use planning or environmental analysis is warranted' in a direct rebuke to the Wyoming district judge's order. Audubon previously reported on the judge's ruling that temporarily halted the rollbacks of essential protections for sage-grouse habitat--home also to some 350-plus other species, including mule deer, elk, and pronghorn.
Conflicted Interior Secretary Bernhardt quickly began working with dispatch to roll back habitat protections shortly after being appointed by the Trump administration to be the agency's deputy secretary in 2017. Western Values Project previously exposed the oil industry and Bernhardt's former clients' close working relationships with Interior and the BLM that raised serious ethical and conflict of interest questions. Bernhardt and the BLM's William Pendley have nearly 80 known industry related conflicts of interest between them. The duo is arguably the most conflicted land managing appointees in U.S. history.
Additionally, Karen Budd-Falen--Interior's Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife and "darling of the Sagebrush Rebellion"--has serious conflicts of interest concerning her ownership stake in a ranching empire spanning across hundreds of thousands of acres overlapping prime sage-grouse habitat.
"The fact that this continues to be Secretary Bernhardt's top priority in the middle of an ongoing pandemic and illegal insurrection attempts by Trump supporters is appalling," added O'Neill.
The Trump administration is pushing to finalize major rollbacks and rule changes that would undermine wildlife protections and exploit public lands before the clock strikes midnight. Through the looming insurrection attempts, 25th Amendment and impeachment vote, Trump's former lobbyists in cabinet positions continue to act on behalf of their former clients and solidify Trump's legacy as the worst public lands and environmental administration in history.
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