Trump's Nominee to Oversee Federal Lands Has 50 Conflicts of Interest

By Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

05 August 20

illiam Perry Pendley, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has said that the government should sell federal lands, denied climate change, wants to weaken the Endangered Species Act and has sued BLM and the Interior Department repeatedly over the course of his career. His history of litigation against the agency that Trump has finally nominated him to lead—after nearly a year as its acting head—generated a list of potential conflicts of interest that is literally 17 pages long. With so many conflicts, what is left for Pendley to do as head of BLM?

When he initially joined the agency, which administers 245 million acres of federal lands and 30% of the country’s minerals, Pendley issued a 17-page list of 57 potential conflicts that he had to recuse from, including his former employer, the Mountain States Legal foundation (MSLF), his book publisher, and initially the Washington Examiner where he was a frequent blog contributor. Seven of those recusals have expired, and 50 are still in effect. The majority of the conflicts stem from clients that he represented at MSLF, including several airline and helicopter companies, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, the American Exploration & Mining Association, the National Mining Association and the Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming Farm Bureau Federations. 

Of course Pendley should not be allowed to work on matters related to his former employer, but recusing becomes a lot more complicated when his former employer has sued BLM and it’s parent agency the Department of Interior so frequently, and on behalf of so many clients, that Pendley’s work could be severely restricted. Not only that, but his past work has also conflicted Pendley out of party matters related to two major trade groups that would seek to influence BLM. It is hard to imagine how he could administer federal lands and minerals if he couldn’t make decisions related to multiple mining trade associations, five state’s farm bureau federations, or ideally any of the issues that his former employer has sued on.

But perhaps appointing a BLM director who is conflicted out of so much of the agency’s work is actually the point. 

Pendley put his antagonistic attitude towards federal regulations and ownership of land into action as president of MSLF, where he worked until December 2018. In July 2019, he was appointed as the acting director of BLM. During the Trump administration alone, MSLF has been involved in at least six lawsuits challenging Interior and BLM actions or policies. MSLF is involved in four active lawsuits against Pendley’s boss, Interior Secretary Berhnardt, one against Interior itself and one against the Interior Board of Land Appeals. In addition, MSLF has intervened in two lawsuits advocating the reduction of the size of Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. MSLF also intervened in a lawsuit against the United States to advocate for the rollback of grizzly bear protections. Most of these lawsuits involving Interior are attempts to increase private access to federal land for oil and gas and ranching companies. 

Trump’s Interior Department has moved to put into place several of the policies that MSLF supports, which shows just how much overlap there could be between Pendley’s past work and the post that he’s been nominated to fill. The Endangered Species Act has been severely weakened, grizzly bears can now be hunted with donuts soaked in bacon grease, sage grouse habitat protections were loosened to pave the way for more oil and gas drilling and BLM is considering leasing land to oil and gas companies within half a mile of national monuments. And just a few weeks ago, the Trump administration overturned an environmental regulation in order to speed up the approval of oil and gas pipeline projects. As BLM Director, would Pendley have been conflicted out of all of that? 

To understand Pendley’s perspective on the job he has been nominated for, look no further than the titles of two of his books: War on the West: Government Tyranny on America’s Great Frontier and Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America’s Frontier. 

As the book titles hint, Pendley has long been advocating to reduce government ownership of public lands. In 2013, he called the federal government “a terrible landlord and worse neighbor.” Pendley first worked at the Interior Department under President Reagan, when he got in trouble for his involvement in leasing public land to coal companies far under market rate in order to maximize the amount of federal land being leased to companies. 

Four decades later, Pendley’s crusade has advanced to the next level. This summer, BLM is forging ahead with moving its headquarters from Washington, DC to Grand Junction, Colorado, despite a scathing GAO report saying that the move was not justified. Pendley has vigorously defended the move in several op-eds. Half of the BLM staff asked to move have left the agency instead of moving across the country. Then-acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said last year that such relocations are a “wonderful way” to shed government employees.

Pendley is not the first Trump appointee to work against the agency he was appointed to lead. Former acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Mick Mulvaney sponsored legislation to get rid of the agency. Rick Perry said he thought the US should abolish the Energy Department. Scott Pruitt sued the EPA 13 times and advocated against its existence. They all ended up leading those agencies. All of them have since left. Pruitt and Perry have both returned to the industry they came from.

With Pendley at the helm of BLM, not only have BLM employees had to contend with an agency leader at odds with the agency and its mission, but they have had to navigate Pendley’s absurdly long list of conflicts. Before bringing certain issues to Pendley’s attention, he asked in a note to staff that they consult his list of conflicts. Since that list includes several western states’ farm bureau federations, two of the major mining trade groups and his former employer that is involved in several ongoing lawsuits that are challenging the Interior Department or BLM’s function, it’s easy to imagine that his conflicts could become a real roadblock to agency action.

Pendley also has a financial arrangement with MSLF worth between $250,001 and $500,000 that entitles him to receive fixed annual payments for life beginning in 2025. Although he must recuse from particular matters that would affect the ability or willingness of MSLF to provide this, the agreement links his financial future with MSLF, which raises serious ethical questions given his ability to sign policy that could easily help any number of MSLF’s clients. 

This financial entanglement should cause Pendley to be even more careful to avoid conflicts. Instead, the new ethics agreement submitted with his nomination actually omits language from his earlier ethics agreement requiring his recusal from “issues, decisions, and actions” related to MSLF, focusing only on “particular matters” in which MSLF is a party or represents a client. The legal standard for recusals is whether or not his involvement would cause a reasonable person to question his impartiality. Because of MSLF’s continuing litigation against BLM, and his long history of suing the agency, it is hard to imagine that a reasonable person would trust Pendley to leave all that at the door. During his confirmation hearing, Pendley might commit to recuse from anything in which he has taken a litigation position on behalf of MSLF and confirm that his earlier recusals still stand. But in doing so, he may create a situation where it is impossible for him to do his job. And that would put anyone voting for his confirmation between a rock and a hard place.

As Congress evaluates his tenure and the Senate considers his nomination, it must scrutinize not just his vision for ending government protection of public lands, but also his conflicts of interest. That might take a while.

A New Trump Rule Could Help Big Oil Crush the Climate Movement

By David Sirota, Too Much Information

05 August 20

A rule backed by oil interests tries to keep retirees’ savings locked in climate-threatened assets. Meanwhile, the government says the military must avoid those kind climate-threatened investments.

f you’ve ever seen Tom Cruise force Jack Nicholson to admit that he ordered the code red, then you know that one of the best ways to expose lies and uncover the truth is to spotlight glaring discrepancies between public statements.

If you want to know how companies are misleading regulators, look at the difference between what they tell government officials and what they tell their own shareholders. 

If you want to know how corporations swindle tax collectors, look at the difference between their boastful earnings statements to shareholders, and their miserly profit reports to the IRS.

It’s the same thing with the climate crisis — if you want to see how the system of climate denial imperceptibly defrauds the public on a day-to-day basis, look at the difference between what the federal government is saying to retirees and workers, and what the same federal government just told the Pentagon. 

Then look at how the bait-and-switch ultimately serves the fossil fuel industry — which is now asking the government for protection from the environmental movement that has been successfully pressing pension funds, endowments, governments and other institutional investors to divest from fossil fuels.

Labor Department Moves To Ignore Climate Risks

This emblematic two-part story of climate deception starts with a new rule from Donald Trump’s Labor Department. Coming at a moment when fossil fuel companies and their investors are facing huge losses, the Trump rule aims to make it more difficult for pension and 401k administrators to shift workers’ savings out of fossil fuel assets and into so-called ESG investments, which factor in environmental, social and corporate governance considerations. 

The proposal is supported by Koch-linked conservative thinktanks; the Republican-leaning National Association of Manufacturers; a group of climate-denying GOP lawmakers; and fossil fuel interests such as the North American Coal Company and the Western Energy Alliance. 

The Western Energy Alliance says it “represents over 300 companies engaged in all aspects of environmentally responsible exploration and production of oil and natural gas,” and its comment letter supporting the rule underscores the real agenda behind the Labor Department proposal. 

“We have observed how ESG advocacy has negatively affected the industry’s access to capital over the last few years, and greatly appreciate that (the Labor Department) is addressing the larger issue through this rule,” the alliance wrote. “The rule will help ensure that activism regarding pension plans does not morph into a halt to investment in the sector that provides nearly 70 percent of American energy.”

In other words: Big Oil is effectively arguing that the climate movement’s push to shift investors’ money out of fossil fuel assets and into renewables has been too successful, and so polluters are asking the government to intervene with a special rule to staunch the bleeding.  

Trump officials aren’t explicitly admitting that this is their real motivation. Instead, they purport to be concerned that “a lack of precision and rigor in the ESG investment marketplace” means “there is no consensus about what constitutes a genuine ESG investment.” And yet, that’s a problem that Trump’s government is actively creating: His administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission is refusing to use its power to require corporations to more thoroughly disclose their exposure to climate risks, consequently making it harder for financial managers to evaluate investments’ environmental impacts. 

Of course, despite that regulatory inaction, there remain easy ways to make ESG investments, and trillions of dollars have been flowing into those investments as the public becomes more alarmed by the climate crisis. So that’s where the more radical part of Trump’s new ESG rule intervenes -- the proposal argues that in investing in green companies, pension and 401k administrators may be making “investment decisions for purposes distinct from their responsibility to provide benefits to participants and beneficiaries.” 

Translated into layman’s terms: The Labor Department is claiming to be worried that retirement systems are inappropriately prioritizing environmental concerns over generating good investment gains for workers and retirees. 

Indeed, as Trump’s Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia argued: “Private employer-sponsored retirement plans are not vehicles for furthering social goals or policy objectives that are not in the financial interest of the plan. Rather, (pension) plans should be managed with unwavering focus on a single, very important social goal: providing for the retirement security of American workers.”

Government Says Pentagon Must Consider Climate Risks

Undergirding the Labor Department’s rule is the insinuation that environmental considerations are inherently at odds with corporate earnings and maximizing investors’ returns. That presumption is unsupported by investment data and particularly absurd at a time of oil industry losses. It is also an insidious form of climate denial, as evidenced by a separate government study of one of the planet’s largest economic players: The United States Defense Department. 

In that recent report, the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) apolitical auditors note that the Pentagon acknowledges that it “has identified climate change as a threat to its operations and installations.” Those GAO officials then point out that the military “has not systematically incorporated consideration of climate change into its acquisition and supply processes” — a situation which has ended up “limiting the military departments’ ability to best consider the potential effects on their own operations from climate-related risks faced by their contractors.”

The report concludes by recommending that the Pentagon take immediate steps to factor in climate-related risks when deciding how to successfully invest in its contractors and supply chain. 

“Excluding climate change and extreme weather considerations will limit DOD’s ability to anticipate and manage climate-related risks so as to build resilience into its processes, and could jeopardize its ability to carry out its missions,” GAO wrote.

A Gift of Climate Denial For the GOP Coalition

So let’s review: The Labor Department is trying to help Big Oil prevent retirees’ money from flowing out of the fossil fuel industry and into investments that factor in climate risks. Trump officials claim (without proof) that those green investments jeopardize returns and therefore imperil retirees’ economic security. 

At the same time, the GAO asserts that the Pentagon should go in the opposite direction and diligently factor in climate risks in its contracting decisions, because failing to do so endangers the Defense Department’s supply chain.

Now we see the discrepancy in all its hideous glory — and how it illustrates the kind of climate denial that continues to course through our political system. 

Clearly, the non-political GAO auditors’ are promoting undeniable scientific facts about the Pentagon’s climate-threatened supply-chain investments. 

Clearly, Trump appointees’ ESG rule is designed to continue subjecting retirees’ savings to the very same climate risks that the GAO says the Pentagon must avoid. 

And clearly, those Trump officials are not motivated by any earnest concern for workers. They are motivated by an anti-science ideology of climate denial and corporate fealty that just so happens to serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry, right-wing think tanks, GOP legislators and the Republican Party’s political coalition.