Today, Western Values Project — an Accountable.US project based in Montana, defending America’s public lands — released the latest in a series of corruption reports highlighting how the Trump administration is costing public lands users across Western states. Today’s report focuses on Montana and can be downloaded here.
“Donald Trump and his friends are getting richer by shutting the rest of us out of our American birthright,” said Deputy Director of Western Values Project Jayson O’Neill. “It wasn’t too long ago that the scandal-plagued former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke actually apologized to the same mining executive that has been labeled a ‘bad actor’ by the state of Montana. Now, with former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt running Interior, the Trump administration’s rampant corruption and unchecked recklessness have reached new levels. Any member of Montana’s Congressional delegation who purports to care about public lands must act to actually protect those lands from this unprecedented level of exploitation. A good place to start would be stopping President Trump’s war on Montana’s public lands.”
A revolving door of staff and huge campaign contributions to the President and his allies have paved the way for special interests to jeopardize some of the most iconic landscapes in the state. Strikingly, the report shows that top drillers with vested interests for developing Montana’s public lands have a close relationship to the administration:
Supporting materials for the report can be downloaded here.