Samantha McDonald IPAA

recall exxon busted (UK?) and promised to stop funding denial so shift to buffer/front/trade:

https://climateinvestigations.org/exxon-and-friends-still-funding-climate-denial-and-obstruction-through-ipaa-fti-energy-in-depth

many docs grafs

Internal documents and conversations from the fracking lobby, revealed this week in HuffPost, shine new light on a ten year old public relations campaign front group called Energy In Depth. Documents show this front group is designed explicitly to exist without the fingerprints of its fossil fuel funders, giving the oil industry the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”

This reporting reveals how climate denial remains a key oil industry strategy in spite of their efforts to clean up their image. These shrouded attacks on climate science and solutions, attacks on lawmakers, scientists, lawyers and advocates stand in stark contrast to the seemingly desperate efforts of Exxon and their brethren to retain ‘social license’, gain credibility on climate change and distance themselves from their legacy of climate science denial.

Let’s define “climate denial” up front, as we did years ago in a Guardian interview for a story about Edelman PR: “Our definition of denial is anyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy.” Simple enough. It goes beyond just denying that global warming exists.

HuffPost’s reporting shows that Exxon is a member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), an oil and gas industry trade association whose online assets include “news” sites like Energy In Depth (EID) that spew climate denial and attacks on scientists, journalists, advocates, and lawyers. IPAA acts as a pass through, bundling corporate members’ cash that’s funneled to the firm FTI Consulting, which created and manages sites like EID. An ExxonMobil spokesperson, responding to questions from the HuffPost reporter, tried valiantly to keep the veil in place, saying, “Your questions are better addressed to EID or IPAA.”

IPAA’s long history of denial

The IPAA has a long history of funding and proliferating misinformation on climate change, a legacy that continues to the this day. IPAA was named as a potential funder of the infamous multi-million dollar “uncertainty” campaign detailed in the 1998 Global Climate Science Communications Plan, an effort organized by API, Exxon, Chevron, Southern Company and assorted libertarian extremists. You can find that file and others in our ClimateFiles collection.

POTENTIAL FUNDING FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE SCIENCE COMMUNICATIONS (p. 8)

Potential funding sources were identified as American Petroleum Institute (API) and its members; Business Round Table (BRT) and its members, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and its members; Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and its members; and the National Mining Association (NMA) and its members. - Potential fund allocators were identified as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom and the Marshall Institute.

[View entire document on DocumentCloud]

The IPAA fact sheet on Climate Change released that same year has some pretty alarming climate denial claims — some even more extreme than the Global Climate Coalition was pushing at the time, and includes references toFred Singer’s Leipzig Declaration and theImperial Oil DRI/McGraw Hill study on carbon taxes.IPAA also blame termites and volcanoes — basically everything but fossil fuels — for altering the atmosphere more than fossil fuels:

“Consider this: the largest source of greenhouse gas may be termites, whose digestive activities are responsible for 10 times more production of CO2 than burning fossil fuels.”

“So, since human-related CO2 is only a small portion of total atmospheric CO2, measures taken to limit it will have little or no measurable effect on overall emissions into the atmosphere. More importantly, there is still no evidence that CO2 emissions are warming the earth’s atmosphere. And we have no proof that man’s impact makes a difference at all.”

By 2008, the IPAA had a more nuanced fact sheet on climate change, but still emphasized uncertainty and denial,

“…no climate change policy action should discard the question of science. Too often, recent arguments for action discard the uncertainties of today’s understanding of global climate science. Global climate science is an emerging field, one that changes as the tools to model it improve.”

They know better…

The Washington Post revealed that in a June, 2019 presentation at an IPAA meeting, influential energy lawyer Mark Barron said the “ship has sailed” on using climate science denial as the first line of defense. Instead, Barron advocated lobbying Congress for climate legislation that benefits the oil and gas industry.He drew a sharp contrast between the industry’s former attacks on climate science and a more recent nuanced approach. He told the oil and gas executives and lobbyists gathered at the meeting sponsored by fracking giants Halliburton, Schlumberger and Oxy that they should be ready to talk about global warming, as long as they position fossil fuels as the solution. Despite this, HuffPost reporting shows that Barron’s audience, the IPAA and its members, are still deploying on climate denial and attacks on scientists through projects like EID and other web organs.

Funding Front Groups – FTI and Energy In Depth

IPAA describes Energy in Depth as the industry’s lead “rapid response platform” for the fracking industry. IPAA created Energy in Depth (EID) shortly after the environmental impacts from the fracking boom began to make national headlines. IPAA member Exxon/XTO was one of EID’s first funders.

Internal IPAA Board documents, published by HuffPost, describe the purpose of the project:

“The main focus of EID has evolved into addressing the “Keep It In The Ground” movement.” (Keep it In The Ground refers to activists and scientists working to keep new fossil fuels from being extracted and burned, commensurate with the conclusion by international scientists that we simply cannot burn even a percentage of known and potential fossil fuel reserves if we want to keep global temperatures from rising to dangerous levels.)

...

Funding for EID comes directly from unnamed oil and gas corporations like Exxon, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Oxy, Marathon Oil, and is funneled through IPAA,which funds the Energy in Depth project on an annual basis.

According IPAA budget documents, the EID campaign costs more than $2 million dollars per year, representing about one fifth of IPAA’s total budget, second only to “Salaries and Benefits” in scale.

BIG QUESTION: What puzzles us is how IPAA is classifying this expense to the IRS.This $2M plus annual payment to FTI does not appear, as required by law, on the IRS 990 form filed by IPAA under “Independent Contractors” “that received more than $100,000 in compensation from the organization.” (see Part VII Section B on page 8 of 2017 990). Perhaps IPAA can provide an explanation.

IPAA 2017 990 Independent Contractors Page 8

The real story of Energy In Depth

Colleagues at DeSmog have been watching Energy in Depth from the beginning, when it was launched to blunt attention to the rapid spread of fracking ten years ago and concerns from community members, lawmakers, journalists and activists.

IPAA’s Jeff Eshelman, described the genesis and purpose of the group in a 2017 IPAA retreat:

The IPAA funding of over $2M a year to FTI/Energy in Depth is spent on five sub-campaigns, meant to undermine the public’s understanding and support of climate and environmental protections:

EID Climate exists “to counteract the “Keep it in the Ground” movement’s newsiest strategy to use climate change as a weapon to silence dissent and shut down American energy production”. The website pushes back on litigation against oil and gas companies.

EID Healthis a “rapid response program” to counter studies linking oil and gas drilling and production to health impacts.

Endangered Species Watch is meant to blunt the Federal Endangered Species Actand is described as “disseminating news, regulations and issue alerts to member companies, affiliated industries and policy makers.”

Energy Tax Facts defends tax subsidies for the fossil fuel industry

Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign advocates against movements asking Universities and pension funds to divest from fossil fuels.

FTI has carved out a specialty in aggressive attacks on foes of the oil and gas industry, doing the dirty work that oil corporations would not want their brands tied to in public. An FTI “Techical Paper” report presented at a 2014 Brazilian oil industry conference describes Energy in Depth’s purpose pretty bluntly, stating that the web asset provides the “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.” (emphasis added)

The actual work of running EID is contracted out by IPAA to FTI Consulting, a massive global PR and consulting firm. Here are a few individuals we know are connected to the Energy In Depth project and have written themselves into the wrong side of history:

Matt Dempsey, a Managing Director at FTI, manages Energy in Depth and lists himself as an editorial editor WesternWire, another front group run for Western Energy Alliance, another oil trade association like IPAA. Dempsey and a colleague were recently recorded by a lawyer for EarthRights International who called them out for being agents of Exxon, and pretending to be journalists. Exxon is a defendant in the Boulder Colorado lawsuit that EID and WesternWire have tried hard to malign. Dempsey used to work for Senator James Inhofe.

Steve Everley, is an FTI Managing Director of Strategic Communications and a senior advisor on the Energy In Depth project. Inside Climate News ran a lengthy rebuttal to the work Everley did to trash their actual journalism on fracking in 2014.

Spencer Walrath, who is actually an FTI employee (Director, Energy & Natural Resources at FTI Consulting Inc) but pretends to be an journalist on Energy In Depth. He graduated University of Northern Iowa in 2012. Spencer’s FTI job was announced in his college newsletter.

Katie Brown, PhD, who now works for FTI out of Belgium was a major part of Energy in Depth while working for FTI in Washington DC until a couple years ago. This archived 45 slide Powerpoint presentation from 2014 by Brown lays out the IPAA-FTI-EID connection and details all their work to undermine regulations on ozone, groundwater protection, methane emissions and more. (Brown’s PhD is in English, btw and she is or was working on a book on James Joyce…congratulations, but how does that PhD apply to an energy front group website besides using good grammar?)

More EID denial

FTI’s Energy in Depth Climate front group spends most of its pixels trying to trash climate lawsuits, promoting natural gas as a climate solution, and attacking science implicating methane’s role in climate change. Methane, a super greenhouse gas and the main component of “natural gas”, leaks from fracking fields in vast quantities making the current natural gas supply much dirtier fuel than it used to be before fracking became a thing. This point was recently illustrated nicely with FLIR images by the New York Times, and news of this Exxon gas well leak which released more methane in a few weeks than many countries emit in a year.

Each of the EID sub-campaigns employ tactics common to climate deniers, like attacking climate models, denying the impact of methane from fracking, repeating debunked myths about a global pause in warming, and claiming that “one in six climate and earth scientists” think human’s impact on climate change is “little or none.”

Most recently, Spencer Walrath wrote a piece in EID going after a peer reviewed scientific study on ocean acidification and the companies connected to the carbon dioxide that has acidified the ocean, the science of which is even harder to deny than climate change.

And this post by Katie Brown, PhD at EID uses sham science and Wikipedia links to attack calls for accountability for companies like Exxon.

EID “Experts”

On the EID Climate website, the list of experts includes people like Craig Richardson, president of the coal-funded, climate-denying Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Richardson has called climate change a communist plot.

Other experts include Horace Cooper, who is listed as a senior fellow the National Center for Public Policy Research an organization that has received $445,000 in grants from Exxon over the past two decades including several grants earmarked for climate work.

NCPPR CLIMATE GRANT (p. 44)

View entire document on DocumentCloud]

Cooper is also a Fellow with the preeminent climate science denial group the Heartland Institute. Heartland has held a number of gatherings dedicated to outright climate science denial. Heartland was also heavily funded by Exxon until they dropped them after 2006. The Mercer Family stepped in in 2008 and has given Heartland upwards of $6.7M from 2008-2017. In 2018, this grant appears to have been moved through Donors Trust.

FTI work for other industries with legal and political problems

In 2019, court documents revealed FTI was running opportunities for Monsanto on RoundUp and GMO fights, alternately posing as journalists and attacking journalists, complete with an FTI campaign spreadsheet of steps taken to undermine and intimidate journalist Carey Gillam.

Most recently, FTI produced a report on health care for a front group attacking “Medicare for All” proposals by politicians.

IPAA Lobbying With Climate Denial Under Trump

IPAA is a significant lobbying arm of the oil industry, spending 1.4 million on lobbying in 2018. Freedom of Information Act requests have revealed emails from IPAA lobbyists to key political appointees in the Department of Interior, showing an ignorance of basic climate change information and a willingness to disregard climate science when it gets in the way of oil and gas production.

In one set of emails,IPAA lobbyist Samantha McDonald asked DOI appointees to reduce protections on an endangered species of beetle. A key reason IPAA protested the beetle’s protected status? – because its projected decline was based in part on climate change science. McDonald directly questioned the viability of climate change models, but not before admitting she is “not too familiar” with the 30 year old UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). As proof that the preeminent scientific body studying climate change in the world could not be trusted, she cited a Google search and a random Forbes article. MacDonald wrote to DOI appointee Vincent DeVito in 2017:

“All modeling is done using the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While I am not too familiar with this organization or their work, I did some searching and found this Forbes article discrediting the IPCC, citing irresponsible science practices (intentionally manipulating data, suppressing legitimate opposing arguments, etc.). This may be something to look into and push back on, since most of the climate changes threat analysis in the SSA is based on this work.”

IPAA ON IPCC (p. 214)

View entire document on DocumentCloud]

In spite of her lack of science background, IPAA’s McDonald would go on to testify on endangered species law, and the beetle would eventually be “downlisted” by the Trump administration as reported by the Washington Post.

In sum, the Energy In Depth project is entirely consistent with the 30 year campaign (or back to the 1940s…see CIEL’s Smoke and Fumes) by the oil industry to avoid being regulated for environmental harm caused by their products – climate change, air and water pollution. This covert effort contradicts oil industry leaders’ anxious attempts to portray a greener, climate friendly business model in recent years.

We can see right through it, but the aim is clear. Between Barron, the lawyer’s comments and IPAA’s front group Energy In Depth, the fossil fuel industry clearly is trying to play it both ways – opposing climate action while pushing natural gas as a solution and trying to benefit from whatever climate policies do come to pass and keep drilling away unchecked. All the while refusing to treat the global climate crisis like the real and present danger that it is. While IPAA lobbyists may try to play good cop in meetings on the Hill, they are actually leaning on old fashioned attacks on science to delay and distort any serious attempt to address climate change.

https://grist.org/politics/more-hill-staff-go-on-to-lobby-for-the-oil-industry-because-this-is-how-politics-works/

no lnx

More Hill staff go on to lobby for the oil industry, because this is how politics works

Relationships are the name of the game. And Big Oil knows how to play the game.

Philip Bump

Jan 15, 2013

lend me a lobbyist

Here’s more of this nonsense. From The Hill:

The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) has hired a pair of House GOP staffers to promote oil-and-gas development in Western states and the Gulf of Mexico.

The industry lobbying group said Tuesday that it’s expanding its government affairs staff by adding Mallori McClure, who was an aide to Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), andSamantha McDonald, who worked for Rep. John Fleming (R-La.).

“Mallori’s and Samantha’s experience on Capitol Hill, both advising legislators who not only sat on the House Natural Resources Committee, but who represent important energy-producing states primes them perfectly to advocate for America’s independent oil and natural gas producers inside the Beltway,” saidIPAA President Barry Russell in a statement.

Bullshit. Mallori and Samantha’s relationships on Capitol Hill prime them perfectly to advocate for the industry with their friends and former associates.

A 2010 report found that three out of every four oil industry lobbyists had previously worked for the government.

Even considering the generally friendly relationship between K Street and Capitol Hill, the number of well-connected oil lobbyists is remarkable. The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics calculates that fewer than one in three registered lobbyists in 2009 had revolving-door connections — less than half the oil industry rate found by The Post.

Officials with the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that tracks Interior Department officials who cross over to the oil sector, said they were surprised by the findings. “With these numbers, you can see how the revolving door between the Hill and industry allowed problems in the agency to happen and not be addressed,” said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator for the group.

The Independent Petroleum Association of America is one of 195 organizations and companies lobbying on oil issues. The oil and gas industry employs 736 lobbyists. In 2012, those lobbyists have cost their clients $103 million. That is more than eight times the amount spent by environmental advocates in 2011.

And that explains that.

ggl 5 22

Samantha McDonald - Kanner & Associates, LLC - LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com › samantha-mcdonald-3a57718

Washington, District of Columbia, United States · Vice President · Kanner & Associates, LLC

Experience ; Vice President. Kanner & Associates, LLC. Apr 2022 - Present2 months ; Legislative Affairs Director. NRECA. Aug 2018 - Apr 2022 3 years 9 months.

LI Samantha McDonald

Experience

Kanner & Associates, LLC logo

Vice PresidentVice President

Kanner & Associates, LLC · Full-timeKanner & Associates, LLC · Full-time

Apr 2022 - Present · 2 mosApr 2022 - Present · 2 mos

Washington DC-Baltimore AreaWashington DC-Baltimore Area

NRECA logo

Legislative Affairs DirectorLegislative Affairs Director

NRECANRECA

Aug 2018 - Apr 2022 · 3 yrs 9 mosAug 2018 - Apr 2022 · 3 yrs 9 mos

Arlington, VAArlington, VA

Independent Petroleum Association of America - IPAA logo

Independent Petroleum Association of AmericaIndependent Petroleum Association of America

5 yrs 5 mos5 yrs 5 mos

Director, Government RelationsDirector, Government Relations

Apr 2015 - Aug 2018 · 3 yrs 5 mosApr 2015 - Aug 2018 · 3 yrs 5 mos

Manager, Government AffairsManager, Government Affairs

Apr 2013 - Apr 2015 · 2 yrs 1 moApr 2013 - Apr 2015 · 2 yrs 1 mo

Washington D.C. Metro AreaWashington D.C. Metro Area

U.S. House of Representatives logo

U.S. House of RepresentativesU.S. House of Representatives

5 yrs 8 mos5 yrs 8 mos

Legislative Assistant for Congressman John FlemingLegislative Assistant for CongressmanJohn Fleming

May 2010 - Jan 2013 · 2 yrs 9 mosMay 2010 - Jan 2013 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Policy Areas: Natural Resources Committee, Energy, Agriculture, Trade, Small Biz, Social Security, Education, Budget, Telecom, and Judiciary.Policy Areas: Natural Resources Committee, Energy, Agriculture, Trade, Small Biz, Social Security, Education, Budget, Telecom, and Judiciary.

Legislative Coorespondent for Rep. Steve KingLegislative Coorespondent for Rep. Steve King

Mar 2009 - May 2010 · 1 yr 3 mosMar 2009 - May 2010 · 1 yr 3 mos

Scheduler for Rep. Steve KingScheduler for Rep. Steve King

Apr 2008 - Apr 2009 · 1 yr 1 moApr 2008 - Apr 2009 · 1 yr 1 mo

Scheduler for Rep. John PetersonScheduler for Rep. John Peterson

Jun 2007 - Apr 2008 · 11 mosJun 2007 - Apr 2008 · 11 mos

Campaign Intern at NEPA HeadquartersCampaign Intern at NEPA Headquarters

Rick Santorum for SenateRick Santorum for Senate

Sep 2006 - Nov 2006 · 3 mosSep 2006 - Nov 2006 · 3 mos

Intern for Deputy Billy Timmins, (Fine Gael, Co. Wicklow)Intern for Deputy Billy Timmins, (Fine Gael, Co. Wicklow)

House of the Oireachtais, Irish ParliamentHouse of the Oireachtais, Irish Parliament

Jan 2005 - Apr 2005 · 4 mosJan 2005 - Apr 2005 · 4 mos

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Intern for Rep. Don Sherwood (PA-10)Intern for Rep. Don Sherwood (PA-10)

U.S. House of RepresentativesU.S. House of Representatives

May 2004 - Jul 2004 · 3 mos

Recent Stories from kbzk.com

Since Bernhardt joined the department in 2017, it has made at least 15 policy changes, decisions or proposals that would directly benefit Bernhardt’s former clients. In each case, the past clients shared comments or requests that the department’s actions have granted or aligned with, according to a CNN review.

In some cases, the former clients wrote letters addressed to Bernhardt about those issues or lobbied his colleagues before those colleagues met with Bernhardt on those matters, according to documents.

President Donald Trump has said he will nominate Bernhardt to succeed Ryan Zinke as Interior secretary.

A spokesperson for Bernhardt said in a statement that he has fully complied with his recusal agreements, and some advocates for the energy industry argue that such regulatory rollbacks are part of what Trump was elected to do.

But some environmental groups charge that such decisions by Interior under Bernhardt amount to “favors” for his former clients.

“We’re seeing a raft of favors both large and small being granted, everything from specific projects getting greenlights to larger policies that are either being rolled back from the Obama administration or moved forward in the Trump administration,” said Jesse Prentice-Dunn, of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group that catalogued some of the Interior actions requested by Bernhardt’s former clients.

Bernhardt, who has devoted himself to understanding the intricate details of environmental regulations, has bounced back and forth between government service and lobbying for industry groups over the course of his career.

After working for a Colorado member of Congress in the 1990s, he joined a lobbying firm and later held several positions at Interior from 2001 to 2009 during President George W. Bush’s administration, including as solicitor. Bernhardt left the department to head the natural resources law division of the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

When he re-entered Interior as its deputy secretary for the Trump administration, Bernhardt signed an ethics pledge that recused him from certain matters directly involving 26 former clients, including Halliburton Energy Services, water-supply company Cadiz, Inc., and the offshore-energy trade group National Ocean Industry Association. The recusals for four of those clients have already expired, and the rest will expire in August.

An Interior spokesperson for Bernhardt, Faith Vander Voort, told CNN that his recusal agreements require him not to substantially engage “in any particular matter involving specific parties” related to his former clients for two years after his appointment.That means Bernhardt cannot work on issues such as lawsuits, permits, grants or agreements that directly involve his former clients and generally cannot meet or communicate with those former clients during that time, unless he gets a waiver.

Vander Voort said any critics who suggest Bernhardt has crossed ethical lines with his former clients are either incorrect or deliberately misleading, adding that some may conflate acceptable types of interactions with the “particular matters” Bernhardt is recused from.

His recusal list means former clients are lobbying officials around Bernhardt, according to a CNN review of emails and documents.

For example, Bernhardt’s former client the Independent Petroleum Association of America repeatedly met with and emailed Interior officials about the sage grouse, a western bird that the Obama administration sought to protect with a plan that blocked oil and gas companies from building on much of the birds’ habitat.

In July and August 2017, IPAA lobbyist Samantha McDonald emailed an Interior staffer about the agency issuing new guidance on maps related to sage grouse and the staffer responded that Interior was “working on it,” according to emails obtained by the Western Values Project.

Public calendars show Bernhardt attended at least three staff meetings related to the sage grouse, at least one of which included staffers who communicated with IPAA on the issue or met with the group’s representatives.

In a March 2018 letter, IPAA and other groups specifically thanked Bernhardt for Interior’s regulation rollbacks and said they looked forward to working with the agency on revising sage grouse land-use policies.

In December, the Trump administration released a plan to amend the Obama-era sage grouse protections and open vast swaths of western land for mining and drilling.

The IPAA also praised Bernhardt in a 2017 letter for helping to reform the National Environmental Policy Act and asked that Interior reinstate “categorical exclusions,” which allow the agency to streamline the analysis required to approve projects that could affect the environment, which can save the energy industry time and money.

Bernhardt later authored a memo stating that categorical exclusions should be “fully and properly” considered before such reviews.

A spokesperson for IPAA, Jeff Eshelman, said the association has not had any personal contact with Bernhardt since he joined Interior and that IPAA has lobbied Congress and administrations with these policy recommendations for decades.

“Our policy positions have not changed, our outreach efforts have not changed based on who is in control of Congress or the Administration,” he said.

Other Interior decisions that reflect comments or requests from Bernhardt’s former clients include the rescinding of Obama-era rule that set limits on hydraulic fracturing on federal land and the rollout of plans to expand offshore drilling.

Some of the requests were highly specific. Bernhardt’s former client Noble Energy, for example, commented on an Interior proposal and said the time-period to submit certain documents related to safety systems during an application process should be extended from 60 days to 90 days. A final rule issued in 2018 included that extension.

Interior also cleared the way for one of Bernhardt’s former client’s projects in California.

Cadiz Inc., a water-supply company, proposed a pipeline running water from the Mojave Desert through land owned by the Arizona and California Railroad. The Obama administration blocked the project and stated that an 1875 law mandated that the land be used for railroads.

But an Interior letter sent in 2017 to Scott Slater, Bernhardt’s former colleague at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and the CEO for Cadiz, disagreed and stated, “There is no evidence that the Cadiz project would interfere with continued use of the easement for railroad operations.”

Myron Ebell,the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market organization, argues such project approvals and regulation rollbacks have occurred not because of Bernhardt’s position in office but because of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to promote energy independence and growth.

“Dave Bernhardt is not pursuing his agenda or that of any people he worked for as a lawyer. He’s pursuing the agenda President Trump won the election on and is implementing,” Ebell said.

Still, some Democratic lawmakers have expressed concerns about Bernhardt’s interactions with the energy industry.

A letter by Rep. Raul Grijalva, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources, states more than 100 hours of official government time on Bernhardt’s schedule did not include descriptions or list the non-Interior attendees. The letter requests all calendars maintained by Bernhardt.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) asked Interior’s inspector general to investigate Bernhardt’s involvement in proposals that would revise rules protecting the delta smelt, a California fish.

The New York Times reported that Bernhardt, while at Interior, has worked to strip away such rules, which are also opposed by his former client Westlands Water District, a state-chartered organization that represents farmers who want access to the river water where the fish dwells.

Prentice-Dunn, with the Center for Western Priorities, said Bernhardt’s position at Interior marks another example in the Trump administration, in addition to Andrew Wheeler who heads the EPA, of a lobbyist ascending to lead a regulatory agency despite Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

“Bernhardt has spent his career trying to work the levers of power. Now he is in control of those levers,” Prentice-Dunn added.

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