Interior Deputy Cleared By IG
- July 9, 2024
James Bikales, POLITICO Pro
The Interior Department’s internal watchdog found the department’s acting deputy secretary Laura Daniel-Davis did not violate any ethics rules when she signed off on suspending oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The IG report found Daniel-Davis did not violate any ethics rules because her former employer, National Wildlife Federation, was not a party to any of the leases that would have been affected, and Daniel-Davis during her time at NWF was not involved in that group’s litigation to stop oil leasing in ANWR. The NWF litigation to halt ANWR lease sales was not discussed at May 2021 Interior meeting Daniel-Davis attended, the IG found, and the NWF lawsuit had by that time been stayed by the court. “We therefore concluded that Daniel-Davis’ participation in those particular matters was not restricted or prohibited,” the IG stated in its report.
PPT submitted the following comments that were not published: “The American public deserves much more than a continuing series of officials cleared by technicalities from an administration that proclaims itself the most ethical in history. However, when an agency such as the Department of the Interior is stocked with an endless throng of former employees of special interest groups, I guess skating on the edge of the ethics lines is bound to happen now and again, and again and again and again. When the IG is forced to parse whether this lawsuit or that lawsuit on the same matter were discussed in which meeting at which time on which day, it sure seems that DOI has lowered by several feet the high bar set by the Biden administration’s rhetoric.