President Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is expected to continue the administration’s tradition of violating the U.S. Constitution today by issuing another memorandum redelegating authority of top-level vacant positions at the Department of the Interior. The thirty-first reiteration of the memo is expected to redelegate authority over the Bureau of Land Management to anti-public lands zealot William Pendley and put controversial deputy director David Vela in charge of the National Parks Service. Neither position has had a Senate-confirmed director during Trump’s presidency.
“The lack of leadership, cronyism, and corruption pervasive in the Trump administration is glaringly obvious during this growing crisis, and it is exactly why the U.S. Constitution requires Senate confirmable officials in these critical positions,” said Jayson O’Neill, Director of Western Values Project. “Anti-public lands zealot William Pendley retaining the authority over America’s lands and shared resources is rubbing salt into the wound that is Trump’s corrupt, polluting legacy.”
It’s been no secret that Trump’s Interior Department’s leadership across agencies and bureaus has been completely inadequate, irresponsible, and reckless during the escalating coronavirus pandemic. Just this week, while Western Governors’ pleas for critical resources from the Interior to help save lives has gone unanswered, Interior’s leadership has clearly been more focused on opening a backdoor for another bailout for big oil and coal corporations, plowing forward with oil and gas leases, and unsuccessfully trying to fix the chaos and confusion caused by waiving park entrance fees.
Circumventing U.S. Constitutional obligations, President Trump has illegally applied the Federal Vacancies and Reform Act to install non-Senate confirmed unqualified, conflicted zealots and extremists across his administration.
“As Secretary Bernhardt continues Trump’s tradition of ignoring and violating the U.S. Constitution, the irony that on the thirty-first reiteration of this order it may actually be the one time during this scandal-plagued presidency the law contemplates invoking delegation is as insulting as their decimation of America’s public lands, water, and wildlife,” O’Neill said.
Western Values Project launched a website detailing Pendley’s conflicted and extremist past. Recent polling in Montana found hunters very concerned with Pendley and BLM’s direction under President Trump. Pendley released an extensive 17-page recusal list detailing a 30-year-long resume of anti-public lands advocacy as well as several instances of suing the Interior Department or its sub-agencies. The list details over 50 entities that Pendley must be ethically dismissed from working on, making him more conflicted than his former mega-lobbyist boss, Sec. Bernhardt.
Learn more about Trump’s swampy revolving-door at the Interior Department by visiting DepartmentOfInfluence.org.
Background:
Appointment of Anti-Public Lands Pendley to Top BLM Post is Dangerous
Anti-Public Lands Zealot Pendley Redelegated Authority of Public Lands Bureau Director
Western Senators Have Not Demanded Nor Rejected Official Nomination for William Pendley