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Ctr for Western Priorities

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see pendejo 2025

lots of bad code

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CRC HIT TOUTED BY ZINKE:

Project 2025 would devastate America’s public lands - Center for Western Priorities

see pendly bak

https://capitalresearch.org/article/arabellas-long-war-part-1

“Keep It in the Ground” | Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Anatomy of an Arabella Campaign | Harried Until the End

Summary: For years “dark money” activists ran a coordinated campaign to sabotage and undermine the Trump administration from the offices of Arabella Advisors in Washington, DC. The campaign culminated in the most extreme environmentalist regime in American history under President Joseph Biden.This report goes inside that campaign to destroy Trump’s Department of the Interior and promote the Left’s war on affordable energy.

In 2019, the Capital Research Center’s groundbreaking report on Arabella Advisors exposed the half-billion-dollar network for the first time, dragging Arabella into the limelight as the posterchild of the Left’s “dark money.” Since then we’ve continued to uncover this now $730 million **activist empire**, tracing its shadowy campaigns on everything from abortion on demand to packing the Supreme Court to its war on the Trump administration.

This report on the Arabella network examines theprofessional Left’s years-long campaign to undermine President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior, laying the groundwork for the Biden administration’s crusade against oil and the most radical environmentalist policies in American history.

“Keep It in the Ground”

The U.S. Department of the Interior is primarily responsible for managing roughly 450 million acres of federal land and conservation of their natural resources, most critically the nation’s vast reserves of oil and natural gas. It manages hundreds of dams and reservoirs, regulates drilling on public lands, runs the National Park Service, and maintains public monuments, including dozens attacked by radical Black Lives Matter activists in 2020.

The department also plays a role in foreign diplomacy and national security. Under President Trump that includedinternational wildlife trafficking bans, encouraging trade of precious metals and rare earths, and promoting his Indo-Pacific security and economic strategy.

But the department’s openness to expanding oil and gas production brought the sharpest attacks from the Left. Since the department is entirely under the president’s purview, halting all drilling on public land is far easier than attempting to halt private oil and gas production nationwide—the radical Left’s ultimate goal.

“The natural place to start phasing out supply is on our public lands and oceans where a ban on new leasing will keep up to 450 billion tons of carbon pollution in the ground,” Center for Biological Diversity director Kieran Suckling said in 2015. Bill McKibben, founder of the ultra-leftist 350.org, has also stated that “public lands are one of the easiest places for us to control the flow of carbon into the atmosphere.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s been the policy of Democratic presidents and their activist allies for years. President Barack Obama canceled lease sales in the Artic and Atlantic offshore sites and banned the leasing of coal on federal lands. Phasing down “extraction of fossil fuels from our public lands” was in the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform. That same year a 350.org activist asked Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton what she meant by “extraction on public lands is a done deal?” Clinton replied, “That’s where [President Obama] is moving: No future extraction. I agree with that.” Her running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, later assured another 350.org activist that “I actually am now in that position.”

But even “phasing down” is too conservative for today’s “keep it in the ground” Left. No less than 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls vowed to ban drilling on public lands outright during their party’s 2020 primary. Ever the pawn of the radical Left, on January 27, 2021—exactly one week after his inauguration—President Biden indefinitely suspended development of new oil and gas wells on public lands, which the left-leaning San Francisco Chronicle cheered as “a first step to halting the granting of federal drilling leases permanently.”

Why does this matter? Federal lands account for roughly 24 percent of America’s oil, natural gas, and coal production. In 2019, total crude oil production reached an all-time high of 4.471 billion barrels, with a significant chunk of that growth coming from oil drilled on federal lands. Biden’s ban blocks future development of these key resources, removing them from the supply stream and hampering the energy independence the United States struggled to achieve in recent years. This means higher gasoline and household electricity prices, an estimated $11.3 billion in lost federal royalties and rental fees, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the economy.

With a single executive order, the Left could advance its crusade to “keep it in the ground” for years in the name of global warming. The stakes couldn’t be higher—all that stood in its way was the Trump administration.

In the next installment, watch Arabella Advisors target the Interior Department with two “pop-up” groups.

Tags: 350.org, Accountable.US, Arabella Advisors, Center for American Progress, Center for Biological Diversity, climate change, Department of the Interior, global warming, Hopewell Fund, natural gas, new vent, oil, public lands, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Western Values Project   Hayden Ludwig

Hayden Ludwig is a Senior Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center. He is also a columnist at the Washington Free Beacon and writes regularly for the American Conservative. Ludwig is…+ MORE BY HAYDEN LUDWIG

pt 2

Web of “Pop-Up” Groups

Enter Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, that quietly runs arguably the most powerful activist and lobbying network in politics. Arabella manages four in-house nonprofits collectively called the “sisters,” each of which controls a small army of activists and a legion of “pop-up” groups. And each pop-up group is made to look like a slick, stand-alone website. These pop-ups target virtually every issue in politics—control of the courts, abortion access, gun control, and voter registration and mobilization, even the Trump-Russia collusion hoax—pushing left-wing policies in every corner. What makes Arabella so powerful is how these “pop-ups” deceive individuals into believing they represent genuine local grassroots interests, such as one pop-up in Alaska created to oppose creation of the Pebble Mine run from Arabella’s plush offices in DC.

Arabella’s network is extraordinarily well-funded. In 2019 alone, the four “sisters” reported total revenues exceeding $730 million and poured out $648 million. Between the network’s creation in 2006 and its Form 990 filing for 2019 (the latest available), Arabella’s empire has received more than $3 billion and spent nearly $2.5 billion. Most of that funding was directed to the network’s flagship 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the New Venture Fund, whose largest known donors include the Gates, Ford, Hewlett, Packard, andBuffettFoundations.

Beginning in 2017, Arabella turned its guns on Trump’s Department of the Interior using a pop-up pair: Western Values Project (WVP) and its “sister,” Western Values Project Action (WVPA).

According to their websites, WVP and WVPA were created in 2013 in Helena, Montana, to expose corrupt corporate lobbyists preying on public lands in the West. In reality, WVP is run by the 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund while WVPA is run by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund, Arabella’s in-house lobbying shop. Whatever staff the groups actually have would have been paid by one of Arabella’s nonprofits or possibly by Arabella Advisors itself; we’ll likely never know. But in its 2018 Form 990, New Venture Fund revealed that it is the “paymaster” for Sixteen Thirty Fund (which reported zero employees on its own 2018 Form 990) and “pays the salary and immediately invoices Sixteen Thirty Fund, which reimburses the full amount.”

It’s common for groups to use both kinds of nonprofit to maximize their ability to lobby through the 501(c)(4) and raise non-lobbying funds through the 501(c)(3), since donors may deduct donations to the 501(c)(3) from their taxes. But Arabella takes that tactic to another level, using pop-up fronts for its nonprofits that can take advantage of the New Venture and Sixteen Thirty Fund’s respective tax advantages without disclosing their relationship to one another. Donations to WVP and WVPA in fact benefitted the Arabella-run nonprofits behind the projects, as an archived version of WVP’s website from October 2019 reveals.

Until late 2019 the website for WVP and WVPA revealed a handful of staffers, including Chris Saeger, ex-communications director for the Montana Democratic Party and former Service Employees International Union (SEIU)staffer; Jayson O’Neill, a Democratic staffer for Montana’s legislature and Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D); and Yetta Stein, a staffer for the left-wing political action committee End Citizens United and staffer for the 2018 reelection campaign Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). The archived website also showed a small advisory board consisting of:

WVP’s advisory board also included Caroline Ciccone, who in 2019 was executive director of the New Venture Fund pop-up and anti-Trump “oversight” group Restore Public Trust. Ciccone is a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Obama appointee to the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Democratic strategist. From 2014 to 2017 she led Americans United for Change (AUFC), a top left-wing strategy group whose national field director Scott Foval was recorded in late 2016 by undercover journalists from Project Veritasbragging that AUFC had paid mentally ill and homeless people to instigate violence at Trump campaign rallies. “We know that Trump’s people will [tend to] freak the f— out,” Foval said in the video. “It is not hard to get some of these assholes to ‘pop off.’” The scandal ultimately led back to Robert Creamer, co-founder of the powerful consulting firm Democracy Partners and a former general consultant to AUFC who directed parts of a vast network of advocacy groups all aligned in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. This led to speculation that his firm helped Clinton’s campaign violate collusion laws. Foval described Creamer’s role in the scandal as the “kingpin” who is “diabolical, and I love him for it.” Within days of the video’s release Creamer resigned, and Foval was fired.

Also present was Kyle Herrig, a New Venture Fund board member who sat on the advisory boards of at least five New Venture Fund projects, including American Oversight, a judicial activist and litigation group; Allied Progress, which attacked Trump cabinet officials; and the Ciccone-run Restore Public Trust.

In early 2020 it was announced that Western Values Project and these three Arabella “pop-ups” were being rolled into a new organization: Accountable.US, itself a former New Venture Fund project fully established as an independent nonprofit sometime later that year, headed by president Kyle Herrig and executive director Caroline Ciccone. (It appears that Western Values Project Action remains a project of Sixteen Thirty Fund, but that remains unclear as of writing.)

This reveals that Western Values Project, far from being a grassroots group, is enmeshed in a deeply networked, highly coordinated cabal of professional activists—and it always was.

In the next installment, break down the Arabella campaign against the Interior Department and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

pt 3 zinke ad cartoon overturned boat

anatomy of anArabella Campaign

From 2017 to 2018, WVP ran an all-out attack against Trump administration Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke,publishing post after post savaging Zinke and his staff. WVP even published a massive website, DepartmentofInfluence.org, which compiled boatloads of data on nearly every appointee to the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior. The group’s goal was clear: Drive Ryan Zinke out of office and undermine the department’s policies. They finally succeeded in December 2018, and Zinke resigned in early January 2019 amid ethics complaints alleging he had misused public funds during official travel and spent large sums on frivolous things.

CRC has counted nine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases filed by WVP between April 2017 and Zinke’s resignation, all sporting WVP’s supposed address: aUPS store in Whitefish, Montana (704C 13th St. E., #568, Whitefish, MT 59937). As investigative reporter Dave Skinner points out, “‘Suite 568’ is actually a $150-per-year private mail box, snugged next to a sales placard touting a ‘street address, not a P.O. box number.’”

In these complaints WVP describes itself as “a not-for-profit public interest organization” and “a tax-exempt organization within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code,” never mentioning its status as a project of the New Venture Fund or its connection to Arabella Advisors. At least one FOIA request was co-filed with American Oversight, another former New Venture Fund pop-up run by Kyle Herrig that also used a UPS Store address in its filings (1030 15th St., NW, Suite B255, Washington, DC 20005) and describes itself as “a nonpartisan, non-profit section 501(c)(3) organization.”

These FOIA complaints exclusively targeted the Department of the Interior. Highlights include:

On October 22, 2018, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General released its investigative report into Zinke’s alleged ethics abuses and recommended it to the Department of Justice. The office noted that it “initiated this investigation” in December 2017 “based on information we received while investigating [Zinke’s] use of noncommercial aircraft for U.S. Governmental travel.” The source of that information isn’t named, but it isn’t a stretch to believe it originated with Western Values Project.

Eight days later on October 30, WVP released its statement on the probe calling on Zinke to resign. It launched a website (HasRyanZinkeBeenFiredYet.com) demanding the same. On November 9, WVPA released a $30,000 attack ad in seven Montana newspapers accusing Zinke’s “priorities” of being “upside down” and calling for his resignation—presumably paid for by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which controls WVPA’s finances. One month later Zinke resigned.

INSERT IMAGE: https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2021/02/Western-Values-Project-Zinke-Attack-Ad-2019.pdf

Big Green’s Campaign Rolls On

Joining WVP and WVPA was theCenter for Western Priorities (CWP), a front for the California mega-activist group Resources Legacy Fund—by my count the 16th-largest environmentalist group in the country, spending over $42 million in 2018 alone. CWP painted Zinke as a feckless tool of the oil and gas industry, accusing him of “following President Trump’s marching orders to attack our public lands” and fomenting an “illegal attack on America’s national monuments.” When Zinke resigned in January 2019, CWP labeled him “the most anti-conservation Interior Secretary of all time.”

Almost immediately after Ryan Zinke resigned in December 2018, CWP and WVP turned their guns on undermining Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who became acting secretary on January 2, 2019, and was officially confirmed in April.

Bernhardt served in the George W. Bush administration’s Department of the Interior, leaving in 2009 as the department’s solicitor. After that he led the Denver firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck’s natural resources law practice, where his clients included Halliburton Energy Services and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and he lobbied for Cobalt International Energy and Samson Resources. Before his appointment to the Trump administration, Bernhardt was also registered as a lobbyist for the Westlands Water District in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

On December 17, CWP policy director Jesse Prentice-Dunn published a long hit piece calling Bernhardt a “walking conflict of interest” who would continue “Ryan Zinke’s culture of corruption” and accusing the department of shilling for Big Oil. That same day WVP published the website DavidBernhardt.org, calling Bernhardt “the ultimate DC swamp creature” and an “ex-lobbyist who is too conflicted to be Interior Secretary,” while detailing a laundry list of ethics charges in an attempt to derail his confirmation to the post. Memos about Bernhardt’s background and conflicts of interest and more FOIA requests followed from WVP and CWP, including one from Democracy Forward, a leftist litigation group created by Clinton crony Marc Elias (of Perkins Coie fame) in 2017 to target the Trump administration.

In February, the Campaign for Accountability (CFA), a former “pop-up” of the Arabella-run Hopewell Fund, petitioned the Interior Department inspector general to investigate Bernhardt’s ties to Westlands Water District as a conflict of interest and urged the Senate to reject his confirmation. CFA, which specialized in targeting Trump political appointees, was founded by alumni of another left-wing litigation group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and has been represented by the ex-Arabella pop-up American Oversight in past lawsuits.

The Center for American Progress joined in, labeling Bernhardt “the most conflicted Trump Cabinet nominee.” Greenpeace and the Center for Biological Diversity urged the department’s inspector general to investigate those conflicts of interest, melodramatically declaring him “the most dangerous man in America for endangered species and public lands.” The Sierra Club demanded the Senate reject his confirmation, as did the National Parks Conservation Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In March, WVPA launched a six-figure television ad buy targeting Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich (NM) and moderate Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (CO) and Martha McSally (AZ) to oppose Bernhardt’s confirmation. The assault continued until the Senate confirmed Bernhardt in April 2019. From then on the group’s crusade against Trump’s Department of the Interior focused on thwarting its agenda.

In the next installment, the professional Left’s years-long campaign culminates in the Biden Administration’s rush toward radical “green” policies.

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pt 4

Harried Until the End

WVP filed another five FOIA requests against the Department of the Interior between 2019 and 2020, almost certainly with the intent of discovering ammo for future ethics complaints. Among its requests were all communications between the department and Bernhardt’s former clients from Brownstein Hyatt and the Westlands Water District as well as copies of “all text messages sent by Secretary David Benhardt from July 1, 2017,” through February 2020. The leftist website Outside Online even set up a “David Bernhardt Scandal Tracker” days after his confirmation.

But much of the Left’s campaign shifted to halting Trump’s supposed war on public lands until he left office in January 2021. “Yes, Trump really is coming to take your public lands,” WVP howled in late 2019, claiming the administration was selling off federal land to oil interests bent on pillaging it. In reality, the Bureau of Land Management (which is part of the Interior Department) continued tolease lands to drilling companies in 5–10 year options, a decades-old practice. As a result, oil and gas production soared in 2019, particularly in New Mexico and Wyoming, which sit atop massive deposits.

The Department of the Interior disbursed a staggering $11.69 billion to the states in 2019 alone from energy production on federal and Indian-owned lands, a $2.76 billion increase over 2018. Gasoline prices dropped from a nationwide average of $2.813 in 2018 to $2.691 in 2019 to $2.258 in 2020. [NO MENTION OF EPIC PANDEMIC FAIL] And the United States achieved energy independence in 2019, with energy production exceeding consumption for thefirst timesince 1957. In a single year, energy production increased by an impressive 5.7 percent, with so-called fossil fuels accounting for 80 percent of all energy production and consumption that year.

WVP harried Trump and his cabinet out of office, blasting “Secretary David Bernhardt’s Wildly Destructive Track Record” in December 2020—which included such silliness as staging Trump’s May 2020 Fox News town hall inside the Lincoln Memorial, allowing national parks to be used as “centerpieces” for his reelection campaign, and holding “expensive military-infused Independence Day rallies on the National Mall” (the horror!).

Targeting Trump’s energy and environmental policies were among Biden’s first moves in office. Biden cancelled a planned expansion to the Keystone oil pipeline (Keystone XL or “export limited”), pledged to protect 30 percent of U.S. land and water by 2030, and froze new leases for oil and gas development on federal land.

Biden’s nominee for the department, Rep. Debra Haaland (D-NM), was confirmed in March 2021 on a nearly party line vote (four Republicans joined with every Democrat in the Senate). Haaland has been criticized by conservatives as a far-left extremist with a perfect 2020 score and 98 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters,which ranks politicians for their fidelity to leftist environmental legislation. (Incidentally, Haaland received a 100 percent score from the pro-abortion groups Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.) While Haaland told Congress during her confirmation process that fossil fuels “will continue to play a major role in America for years to come,” she’s a global warming ideologue who trumpeted “keep fossil fuels in the ground,” voting “against all new fossil fuel infrastructure,” and transitioning to “100% clean energy” in her 2018 reelection campaign.

In May, the Biden administration proposed ramping up the Interior Department’s 2022 budget by $2.5 billion (17 percent) to $17.6 billion in order to “address the climate crisis” and create “good-paying union jobs.” Biden wants to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 (it’s currently about 26 percent), a plan proposed by liberal groups in the states as “30 by 30” largely as a measure to “slow climate change” by storing carbon dioxide in plants and soil. He also wants to spend $86 million on the “Civilian Climate Corps,” a reboot of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps. He also wants to spend $300 million “plugging orphan oil and gas wells” and $249 million to boost renewable energy production on public lands.

With pressure from the far Left and willing enablers embedded in the executive branch, the Biden administration will undoubtedly continue down the road toward ever more radical “green” policies—with Arabella’s support. Only one question remains: How much does Biden owe to Arabella’s long war against the Trump Department of the Interior?

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As part of the review, Magallanes also met extensively with members of Utah’s Republican congressional delegation and their staffers, as well as several other state and local officials opposed to the monuments, her :{schedule:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: shows. She participated in calls with numerous Republican lawmakers in other states with monuments impacted by the review. And she met with several industry representatives, including the vice president of operations at Energy Fuels Resources, a uranium company that :{lobbied Trump to carve up Bears Ears:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: so that it could access the area’s uranium deposits, as The Washington Post :{first reported:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}:.[whls up bears ears]

https://www.rollcall.com/2019/03/04/seeking-to-shrink-bears-ears-uranium-firm-met-with-interior-before-review/

A meeting between an Interior Department official and a company tied to mineral interests in the Bears Ears National Monument area — almost a month before President Donald Trump requested a review that substantially reduced its boundaries — may end up in the crosshairs of House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva.

Documents show that Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of a Canadian energy firm, met with a top Interior official who would be involved with the review before Trump requested it.

When President Barack Obama designated the monument in December 2016, its boundaries encompassed or abutted over 350 uranium claims tied to the company. Its uranium processing mill, the only such facility in the United States, was located mere miles from the monument. Proximity to a national monument can lead to additional regulatory scrutiny.

In December 2017, Trump, following recommendations by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that were developed during the review, significantly reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.

Trump’s revamped boundaries for Bears Ears also likely removed all of more than 100 uranium claims tied to Energy Fuels. inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: auto; position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 615px; height: 1px;">

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The committee has invited Zinke, who resigned and left last December amid corruption charges, to attend. But he declined, according to Sarvana.

Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, plans to investigate the monuments review.

He said if an individual involved with the review met with Energy Fuels before the review began, “all my suspicions as to the motivation behind the shrinkage would be validated.”

“I think it would make our need to get at the bottom of it. … It would make it even more significant,” he said.

In statements, both Interior and Energy Fuels Resources confirmed the meeting on April 5, 2017. Interior’s monument review began April 26.

Curtis Moore, Energy Fuels Resources vice president of marketing and corporate development, said in a Feb. 26 email, “Our recollection is that the April meeting was very brief, but we did inquire about the possibility of minor boundary adjustments to move the boundaries away from our existing operations.”

“Nonetheless, our official request was for minor boundary adjustments that would have reduced the area of the monument by a maximum of 2.6 percent. The President reduced the monument by 85 percent. We didn’t ask for that,” Moore said.

Critics don’t believe Energy Fuels’ account, pointing to a comment letter filed during the review suggesting there could be many uranium deposits within the boundaries of the monument that could provide “valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”

They say the meeting is proof Interior’s 2017 assessment had a predetermined outcome of shrinking Bears Ears to benefit the uranium sector generally and Energy Fuels Resources specifically.

“The Trump Administration’s agenda has always been sell out our public lands first and manufacture a rationale — predicated on false information — afterwards. This latest revelation shows yet again they don’t even care to hide their dangerous motives so long as they can please the corporate polluters that have directed their every move,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.

Emails released in two different Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the Sierra Club against Interior and the EPA also show Andrew Wheeler, confirmed Feb. 28 as the new EPA administrator, was integral to getting Energy Fuels Resources’ foot in the door before the review.

Citing his prior work on the Trump presidential campaign, Wheeler reached out to set up the meeting and attended it. His contacts with Interior during that period are not included in his lobbying disclosures. The firm he was working for, Faegre Baker Daniels, said it is reviewing those disclosures.

In a statement, EPA spokesman Michael Abboud said the matter had nothing to do with Wheeler’s role at the agency.

“[He] has been very transparent concerning his work with Energy Fuels Resources, even discussing this during his confirmation process. He has consistently worked to comply with the Lobbying Disclosure Act; this particular matter involving Energy Fuels Resources and Bears Ears National Monument does not impact his work at EPA as this is not an agency-related issue,” Abboud said.

Uranium prospects

Previous reports by The Washington Post and The New York Times have outlined how coal, oil and other fossil fuel interests may have factored into the decisions made during the monuments review.

But Zinke, when he visited Bears Ears during the review, rejected the oil and gas argument.

“We … have a pretty good idea of the oil and gas potential, so Bears Ears really isn’t about oil and gas at all,” Zinke told reporters in May 2017 while touring Bears Ears. “There is some uranium. [I’m] more concerned about the present mill and the proximity to it.”

Energy Fuels owns that mill, known as White Mesa. Bears Ears’ original boundaries came within six miles of the site, the only operational uranium processing mill in the United States.The monument was also 15 miles from its Daneros Mine, which is not operating but may reopen if the price of uranium rises.

A national monument, as well as any subsequent changes to federal regulations, could “significantly adversely impact” those projects and “could have a material adverse impact on the company,” Energy Fuels’ corporate filings stated.

During the monuments review, the company raised several concerns. It noted the monument included a portion of road used for accessing the mine and encompassed air and water quality monitoring sites required under federal regulations.

Energy Fuels Resources also complained that the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental review had stalled expansion of Daneros and could affect future operations at White Mesa. If the Daneros expansion could be held up, the company wrote,  the boundaries “could have a chilling effect on future land uses not only within but also near the monument.”

The company has at least 235 active claims on uranium deposits near both Daneros and White Mesa, according to a review of Bureau of Land Management data by Grand Canyon Trust, a public lands advocacy and watchdog group.

The trust’s review showed that over 100 claims within the original monument boundaries are held by Tigris Uranium Corporation, a subsidiary of enCore Energy Corporation, which it received after it sold those claims to the company in 2015. According to Energy Fuels’ annual corporate filings, it owns at least a 12.8 percent stake in enCore.

When Trump shrank the monument in December 2017 from 1.35 million acres to a little over 200,000 acres, the new boundaries excluded all of those claims, according to Grand Canyon Trust.

Those deposits aren’t worth much now because the price of uranium is so low. The company has said some of its mines, like Daneros, are on standby for this reason.

However, the Trump administration is weighing whether it will set tariffs on cheaper foreign imports of uranium. That effort, spurred by a petition to the Commerce Department by the firm and another company involved in uranium mining, Ur-Energy, could result in reactivating Daneros.

In its comment letter filed during the monument review, Energy Fuels noted “many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the newly created BENM that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future.”

It requested “any boundary revision provide an adequate buffer between the White Mesa mill, the Daneros mine and all valid existing mineral rights such that there will be no impact to our lawful existing or future operations.”

In an email, Moore said that the company only asked for “very minor boundary adjustments” and that it supports a mining ban on the lands formerly within the monument that Trump removed. He provided two maps which he said were what they suggested to Interior during the review, each showing only minor reductions near the White Mesa and Daneros properties.

“We didn’t ask for a larger reduction. All along, we were simply seeking minor boundary adjustments to create buffers between our existing operations and the monument,” Moore said. “I’m not sure how we can be more clear, we have no interest in mining inside of BENM.”

Groups supportive of the monument’s original boundaries are not convinced.

“You want to take people at their word, but the comment letter is pretty clear,” said Tim Peterson, cultural landscapes program director for Grand Canyon Trust.

‘Preordained’ decision?

When Energy Fuels first reached out to Interior, it only mentioned the mill and the mine.

“I worked on energy and environmental policy for Mr. Trump during the campaign. I have a client that I would like to get before the Secretary, Energy Fuels,” Wheeler wrote in a March 27 email to Amanda Kaster, at the time one of Zinke’s aides.

“They have two uranium facilities bordering each side of Bears Ears national monument in Utah.They can come to DC at any time. What is the best way for me to request a meeting with the Secretary? I’m just not sure who I should reach out to,” Wheeler said.

On April 5, Wheeler, Energy Fuels executive William Paul Goranson, and Darrin Munoz, another lobbyist at Faegre Baker Daniels, met with Kathleen Benedetto, at the time a senior adviser to Zinke, according to visitor logs and Benedetto’s schedule. Her schedule was first obtained by independent journalist Jimmy Tobias via a public records request.

Through an Interior spokeswoman, Benedetto said she alone took the meeting and Zinke did not participate. Zinke’s personal schedule has an hourlong period, 30 minutes after the meeting began, during which his whereabouts are unaccounted for.

In a statement, Benedetto said she didn’t recallthe meeting with the “same specificity” as the uranium firm. She did note she recalled “passing along some information that the company provided that included a map of its facilities relative to the Bears Ears boundary.”

According to an Interior spokeswoman, she likely relayed that information to Downey Magallanes, who was at the time a special assistant to Zinke and would become a point person on the eventual monuments review. Magallanes and Benedetto’s schedules both show they had a one-on-one meeting later that day.

Energy Fuels Resources was not the only party to lobby for reducing Bears Ears. Its designation was staunchly opposed by the Utah congressional delegation, most prominently former GOP Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, and state politicians. They said oil and gas deposits within the monument’s boundaries could have been used for raising money for public schools and feared losing such a revenue source.

However, Aaron Weiss, deputy director for the Center for Western Priorities, said Interior confirming it held a meeting to discuss cuts to Bears Ears before the review began in earnest is “admitting that they were already going after monument boundaries even before the president ordered the review.”

“This monument review was a sham, and the outcome was preordained,” said Weiss, whose public lands advocacy group is a frequent critic of the Trump administration’s policies.

When asked about suggestions the monument’s review was predetermined, the Interior Department declined to comment.