Interior watchdog opens investigation into ethics in Bernhardt four days after confirmation by Senate

The interior ministry's internal oversight body on Monday opened an investigation into ethics complaints against former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt, four days after the Senate confirmed him as secretary from the agency.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Inspector General of the Interior, Nancy DiPaolo, said the investigation was "based on the demands of many lawmakers and others". At least eight senators who rebuked Bernhardt during his confirmation hearing, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Called for an investigation. Many conservation groups have also submitted inquiries to investigate potential conflicts of interest.

Inspector General Mary L. Kendall wrote to the director of one of the groups, the Campaign for Accountability, that her office "had received seven complaints, including yours, from a wide range of range of complainants alleging various conflicts of interest and other violations. David Bernhardt, then Deputy Secretary of the Interior. "

"We continue to collect relevant information on complaints and have opened an investigation to answer them," Kendall added. "We will conduct our review as quickly and thoroughly as possible."

Throughout his confirmation process, Bernhardt and his Senate allies affirmed that he had complied with the agency's ethics guidelines and hired additional ethics officers to strengthen them.

"It is important to note that the Ministry's Ethics Office has already reviewed many of these charges at the request of Mr. Bernhardt and determined that [he] is in full compliance with its ethics agreement and all applicable laws, "said Faith Vander Voort, spokesman for the department, in a statement sent via e-mail.

Vander Voort included a list of actions taken by Bernhardt as Acting Secretary prior to his confirmation by the Senate, such as making the Ethics Office a division reporting to the Attorney, engaging more professionals in the field. full-time ethics and give them the power to articulate their concerns "faster and more directly." "

However, as a deputy to former secretary Ryan Zinke, who stepped down in December under a cloud of internal investigations, Bernhardt played a central role in the policy changes that would benefit his former clients.

A few months after he was confirmed as a Member of Parliament in 2017, Bernhardt guided the decision to remove the endangered species protections imposed by the Fish and Wildlife Service, to open vast areas of public lands to more gas drilling and weaken the safety rules for ocean oil production platforms.

A year later, the Ministry of the Interior reinterpreted the Migratory Birds Treaty Act in a way that made sense for its implementation to be guaranteed. The ministry has issued guidelines to the wildlife enforcement police that an individual or group can not be held responsible for the killing of birds. in many circumstances.

For example, he stated that "all that matters is that the landowner take an action that is not intended to kill owls frightens". But farmers who pay with barn owls are much less important than farms with oil wells that kill multitudes of birds. In addition, Interior has decided to no longer bill offshore oil and gas activities for leaks that kill birds under the law.

Legislators in the House also expressed concern about Bernhardt's transparency in documenting his daily meetings with staff and people outside the department.

As a lobbyist, Bernhardt has so many conflicts of interest that he wears a card reminding him of what to avoid for the parties to stay in compliance with the rules of ethics.

However, his staff used to prepare a "daily map" with Bernhardt's detailed program on a Google document, in order to hide information from the public. A detailed account of her meetings as Acting Secretary had been prepared the day before the next working day. But this document was erased every day when it was crushed to reflect its appointments for the next day.

This practice deviates significantly from that of its predecessors, who maintained more detailed calendars identifying who they met with and when, and made this information available to the public on the agency's website.

Representatives Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) And Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) Asked for more transparency from Bernhardt.