Internal emails show Biden officials openly disagreed with admin’s fossil fuel policies
- October 22, 2023
Thomas Catenacci, Fox News
EXCLUSIVE: Several top Biden administration officials openly disagreed with a decision to resume oil and gas leasing, even applauding a Democrat lawmaker’s condemnation of the action, according to internal emails obtained by Fox News Digital.
On Aug. 16, 2021, Interior Department (DOI) Deputy Assistant Secretary Steven Feldgus forwarded a press release – according to the emails obtained by watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with Fox News Digital – from Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., the then-chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, to Nada Wolff Culver, Laura Daniel-Davis and Amanda Lefton, three fellow senior DOI officials overseeing key energy policy.
“Holding more lease sales under today’s outdated standards is economically wasteful and environmentally destructive, and everyone not sitting in a fossil fuel boardroom knows it,” Grijalva said in a statement included in the release.
“These conversations reveal how at odds some officials are with the policies they’re entrusted to develop and implement,” Michael Chamberlain, the director of Protect the Public’s Trust, which recently obtained the emails via an information request, told Fox News Digital.
“DOI leadership’s hostility to fossil fuel development seems to be matched only by their efforts to hide that hostility,” Chamberlain continued. “How can the public trust its government with so much inconsistency between the private and public statements of officials like these?”