Coal lobby has its hand out to administration littered with former mining industry staff and a Senate majority leader who has taken thousands of their dollars
Coal corporations asking for a bailout are likely to find a receptive audience in the Trump administration according to DepartmentofInfluence.org — a research resource from Western Values Project, a Montana-based Accountable.US project focused on public lands conservation. The site shows at least 12 current or former political appointees at the Interior Department have coal industry ties.
The National Mining Association (NMA) is a major donor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign and has deep ties to President Donald Trump’s administration. NMA President Rich Nolan recently sent a letter to President Trump and Congress asking for specific bailouts and concessions for coal corporations, including royalty rate reductions and reductions in payments to the Abandoned Mine Land program.
“It’s outrageous that coal corporations and their lobbyists are using a global pandemic as an excuse to ask their allies in the Trump administration for a bailout,” said Jayson O’Neill, Director of Western Values Project. “Mining industry lobbyists are littered throughout the Trump administration and have lined McConnell’s pockets with thousands of dollars. It would be no surprise if Trump and McConnell end up giving Big Coal everything they want, even if it means ignoring the global health crisis.”
More on Big Coal’s connections to Trump and McConnell from DepartmentofInfluence.org:
- Major oil and gas industry group American Petroleum Institute (API), which is also requesting handouts including “Waiving Non-Essential Compliance Obligations” is a lobbying client of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s former lobbying firm. And a former Bernhardt lobbying client, Halliburton, is represented by API. NMA, API and Halliburton all stand to significantly benefit if their requests are granted.
- Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was formerly a lobbyist for Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is a member of the National Mining Association. At BHFS, he also lobbied on behalf of Hudbay Minerals, another National Mining Association member, and provided legal services to NRG Energy, an energy company that owns coal plants across the country.
- Kevin O’Scannlain is a Senior Counselor at Interior. Before joining Interior, he was a registered lobbyist for the Drummond Company Inc., a major coal company and member of the National Mining Association.
- Kathleen “Kathy” Benedetto, before her current role as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, co-founded a nonprofit called the Women’s Mining Coalition, which is an organization that promotes the mining industry by lobbying Congress. Benedetto also worked for front group Montanans for Common Sense Water Laws (MCSW), an industry-funded group that opposed clean water initiatives unfavorable to mining companies.
- Landon “Tucker” Davis, a policy advisor in Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, was formerly the Director of FACES of Coal, a pro-mountaintop removal campaign whose goal was to educate the public and policymakers about the value of coal mining.
- Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, Andrea Travnicek, was a lobbyist for Allete, the parent company of BNI Coal. BNI owns a North Dakota lignite mine which mines about 4.5 million tons of lignite coal annually.
- Christian Palich, who is a senior advisor in Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, was formerly the president of the Ohio Coal Association, which is another member of the National Mining Association.
- Assistant Secretary for Insular and International Affairs Doug Domenech, in October 2017, a month after he started his job as Secretary of Insular Affairs, bought more than $15,000 of stock in Compass Minerals, “a mining company that does business with the Interior Department.”
- Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney, before joining Trump’s Interior Department, was a lobbyist for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), an Alaskan oil and coal organization.
- Now Interior’s Deputy Solicitor of Indian Affairs, when he was an attorney in private practice, one of Kyle Scherer‘s clients was coal giant Peabody Energy, which is also a National Mining Association member.
- Interior’s former Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Downey Magallanes is Frederick Palmer’s daughter; Palmer was previously the senior vice president of government relations at coal giant and NMA member Peabody Energy. While at Interior, Magallanes helped lead the controversial national monument review, which led to protections for “coal-rich” Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument getting gutted.
- Todd Wynn, formerly Interior’s Director of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, was the Director of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) before he joined Interior. The task force Wynn led at ALEC included coal members such as American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and Peabody Energy.
- Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee, which was disbanded after it faced a legal challenge over its industry ties, was heavily stacked with special interests, including an executive from major coal company Cloud Peak Energy.
To learn more about President Trump and Sec. Bernhardt’s conflict-ridden swamp team at the Interior Department, visit DepartmentofInfluence.org.