The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on Trump’s Interior Solicitor nominee Daniel Jorjani.
Jorjani is best known for his work as a ‘key employee’ for the oil billionaire Koch Brothers’ network and has operated in an ‘acting’ role at the Department of Interior for nearly two years. At Interior, he has been the architect of some of the department’s most controversial legal decisions that have benefited industry and special interests, such as undermining the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and reversing a previous ruling that renewed copper and nickel mining leases for Twin Metals, a Chilean mining company, on the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. He is also leading the department’s efforts to limit transparency. Jorjani once said that ‘at the end of the day, our job is to protect the Secretary.’
Western Values Project Executive Director Chris Saeger issued the following statement:
If Secretary Bernhardt is our public lands Dr. Evil, Daniel Jorjani is his mini-me. Much like Bernhardt, Trump’s solicitor nominee has time and time again used his government service to turn a profit and open doors for powerful special interests. Jorjani is the antithesis of what Americans need in the department’s top lawyer overseeing our public lands and wildlife. We hope Senators buck up and start rejecting these conflicted Trump nominees, who are invested in benefiting special interests, not our public lands.”
Western Values Project issued a memorandum detailing some of his most controversial actions while at Interior. A full profile of Trump’s Interior Solicitor nominee Daniel Jorjani is available on the Western Values Project’s Department of Influence website.
The Senate also considered the nomination of Mark Greenblatt to be Interior’s Inspector General. If confirmed, Greenblatt will have to address the multi-faceted investigation opened into Bernhardt just four days after his confirmation, following a series of reports about his numerous conflicts of interest and lobbying violations and investigations into six other Trump political appointees for potential ethics violations.