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Both alarm and concern were expressed Saturday in response to new reporting about a charitable group with close ties to the U.S. Supreme Court that has been soliciting and accepting donations from corporate interests and far-right activists with cases before the Court.
The New York Times exposé focused on the activities and fundraising of the Supreme Court Historical Society, a nonprofit that claims its mission is "dedicated to the collection and preservation" of the Court's history.
While the group refused to disclose its donors to the Times, reporters from the newspaper determine that much of the funding came from powerful companies like Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, and Facebook as well as anti-abortion activists like Rev. Rob Schenck.
According to the newspaper:
:{The society has raised more than $23 million over the last two decades. Because of its nonprofit status, it does not have to publicly disclose its donors—and declined when asked to do so. But The New York Times was able to identify the sources behind more than $10.7 million raised since 2003, the first year for which relevant records were available.
At least $6.4 million—or 60 percent—came from corporations, special interest groups, or lawyers and firms that argued cases before the court,}: according to an analysis of archived historical society newsletters and publicly available records that detail grants given to the society by foundations. Of that, at least $4.7 million came from individuals or entities in years when they had a pending interest in a federal court case on appeal or at the high court, records show.
In the case of Chevron, the oil giant actively gave to the society even as it had a pending climate litigation working its way through the court.
In response to the new revelations, public interest attorney Steven Donzinger, who was himself targeted by Chevron for his work aimed at holding the company to account for its polluting activities in Ecuador, said the implications were "horrifying."
"Why are these conflicts allowed?" asked Donzinger.
Others quoted by the Times said the effort by people like Rev. Schenck, who admits to using the charitable group as a way to get other anti-abortion activists closer to the justices, creates a clear conflict of interest.
Charles Fried, a Harvard Law professor who once served as solicitor general in the Reagan administration and counts himself a donor to the Historical Society, told the newspaper was so "horrified" by Schenck's behavior that he may no longer give.
"It's disgusting," Fried said. "Many of the people who contribute have the same reasons I do. You go to a cocktail party and support a good cause. But it turns out that for some people it's not that innocent."
While the Times notes that the Historical Society is "ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government," the reality is that "the two are inextricably intertwined," with court justices serving as chair of the board and hosting gala events where exclusive access is reportedly part of the allure.
The left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said the reporting raises "significant questions" about the group which has "raked in millions—a significant chunk of it from groups with cases before the Court" over the last two decades.
Fix the Court, which acts as a watchdog organization for the U.S. Supreme Court, said the justification for the Historical Society's existence just doesn't hold water.
and Gabe Roth, the group's executive director, told the Times that if money was an issue for funding such a project it would be the best solution—one free of ethical concerns—for Congress to simply appropriate the money needed to maintain the history of the Court.
trump has racked up 3,403 conflicts of interests since taking office
Lisa Newcomb / Common Dreams September 25, 2020
In its continuing research into President Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest, a government watchdog group released a new report Thursday that shows the commander-in-chief has engaged in 3,403 conflicts of…
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Departed Interior Sec. Zinke Under Investigation by DOJ
The Justice Department is looking into whether former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to investigators at the Department of Interior, The Washington Post reports. Anonymous sources tell the Post that investigators at the Interior's inspector general's office raised the issue with the DOJ after suspecting Zinke may have lied during questioning over hisreal estate deals in Montana and his review of a Native American casino project in Connecticut.
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https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/todd-wynn-interior-ethics_us_5b23f523e4b0f9178a9cd1fc
...Ryan Zinke's information from outside organizations comes under the control of a political appointee whose ties to former employers have raised ethics questions.
A top political appointee at the Interior Department repeatedly scheduled meetings with his former employers in an apparent violation of federal ethics rules,HuffPost has learned.
Todd Wynn, director of the agency’s powerful Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, worked as the task force director at the American Legislative Exchange Council from 2011 to 2013, overseeing the energy, environment and agriculture division, and organizing three national conferences a year, a copy of his :{résumé:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: shows. He then joined the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute, :{paying:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: to :{participate:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: in the ALEC task force he previously led.
On Oct. 27, he planned a 30-minute video call with :{Jennifer Butler:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, a senior policy adviser at the ALEC-linked State Policy Network, according to calendars released under a Freedom of Information Act request. On Dec. 19, he scheduled another such call with :{Grant Kidwell:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, the ALEC director in charge of his former task force. A spokeswoman for ALEC denied that the meeting occurred.
Two days later, Wynn slotted 30 minutes for a call with :{Rich Lindsey:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, who heads the energy and environment committee at the :{oil-funded:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: Council of State Governments ― where, according to his :{CV:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: and :{financial disclosures:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}:, Wynn :{also served:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: as a committee member from June 2015 until he joined the Interior Department.
It’s unclear what might have been discussed during the calls, and indeed, HuffPost could not confirm whether they definitely took place as scheduled ― but the calendars of agency officials are generally reliable. The Interior Department and the three political operatives did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Friday.
Wynn’s meetings with ALEC and its affiliate did not violate the ethics pledge because his formal employment at the organization ended more than two years before he joined the agency, Interior Department spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort argued Monday via email. She said Wynn was not employed by the Council of State Governments.
Vander Voort did not respond to questions about Wynn’s continued work with ALEC through the Edison Electric Institute, his role at the Council of State Governments, or provide examples of other agency appointees with similar arrangements.
[pix looks like a proud boy]
CASCADE POLICY INSTITUTETodd Wynn appears in a video posted on YouTube by the conservative Cascade Policy Institute, one of his former employers.
But on Oct. 16, Wynn :{signed:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: President Donald Trump’s :{ethics pledge:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: prohibiting political appointees in the executive branch from participating “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to [one’s] former employer or former clients.” Barred interactions include “any meeting or other communication relating to the performance of one’s official duties with a former employer or former client, unless the communication applies to a particular matter of general applicability and participation in the meeting or other event is open to all interested parties.”
The scheduled calls :{also appear to violate:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: the “government-wide regulatory standards of conduct” that “bar [Wynn] from meeting personally with any former client or employer he served in the year prior to the meeting,” Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, said in an email.
Apparentconflicts of interestare not new at the Interior Department. In March, :{HuffPost reported:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: that Lori Mashburn, the agency’s White House liaison, attended two private events hosted by her former employer, the conservative Heritage Foundation. Her attendance violated the same ethics pledge Wynn signed. In May, newly released calendars showed David Bernhardt, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, met with a trio of lobbyists for MGM Resorts International, the casino-resort giant that his longtime former employer also represents.
Wynn has been a rising star in the influential network of fossil fuel-funded think tanks that push policies and produce pseudoscientific research to muddle the debate on climate change. He maintained those ties since taking over in a :{critical position:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: that controls the flow of information at the Interior Department, serving as a gatekeeper between Secretary Ryan Zinke and outside organizations.
In November, Wynn attended an energy conference hosted by the Heartland Institute,a former tobacco industry defender turned aggressive climate change denial outfit. Later that month he met with Reaching America, a group that :{advocates:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: for increasing fossil fuel extraction as a means of reducing racial inequality. Throughout that month, he held four separate meetings with the Property and Environment Research Center, a Montana-based “free market” group :{associated:(style="list-style:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;box-sizing:inherit"):}: with the State Policy Network.
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Interior Department advisory group relied on a top energy industry lobbyist to help draft a list of potential regulatory rollbacks, documents obtained by HuffPost show.
At least one suggestion ― reducing the role that local environmental concerns play in leasing federal lands for oil and gas development ― quickly became a reality.
The Onshore Work Group, charged with recommending how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ought to regulate federal lands available for fossil fuel development, already has deep ties to the energy industry. Its chair is Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the oil and gas industry group Western Energy Alliance and a vocal proponent of tearing down many Obama-era environmental protections.
But metadata from the working group’s first draft of recommendations further link the Interior Department with the industry it is tasked with regulating. According to the metadata, Tripp Parks, the Western Energy Alliance’s head of government affairs, was the initial author of the document.
The working group belongs to a growing cadre of industry-friendly advisory bodies Zinke has set up to guide his agenda. In November, he assembled a wildlife conservation advisory group dominated by people with links to trophy hunting. Most members of a public lands advisory group have connections to the outdoor recreation industry.
“It’s a huge concern,” said John DeCicco, a University of Michigan research professor who has worked for the environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. Under previous administrations, DeCicco said, committees like these were usually composed of scientific experts. “What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policymakers who are running roughshod over due process and running roughshod over important checks and balances that are supposed to be there.”
The working group was set up under the umbrella of the Royalty Policy Committee, a group tasked with recommending the royalty rates the federal government should charge for drilling. Many of the committee’s members hail from the oil and gas sector or have significant ties to it. Whereas the same committee had a narrow, technical focus under previous administrations, under Zinke, it has been making sweeping proposals to roll back regulations on federal lands. The committee members who set up the working group have proposed measures like charging bargain-basement royalties for deepwater drilling operations and have described their mandate as “looking at steps to be taken to make DOI a better business partner to its investors.”
Some of those steps appear to have been come directly from the Western Energy Alliance. A document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Parks created the draft recommendations one day before Sgamma circulated them to committee members overseeing the working group.
“It’s a very clear instance of regulatory capture,” said Pat Gallagher, the Sierra Club’s legal director. Of the recommendations, he said, “There is no other object than to get drill bits in the ground as quickly as possible.”
At best, Gallagher said, industry representatives are creating an echo chamber inside the Interior Department. Several of Parks’ recommendations mirror a report the department released in October on “energy burdens.” Sgamma told HuffPost that Parks’ name appears in the document’s metadata because she asked him to pull out relevant sections of the report. This was “the full extent of my staff’s involvement,” she wrote in an email. What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policy makers who are running roughshod over due process.
John DeCicco, University of Michigan research professor
The recommendations included items that had been on Western Energy Alliance’s wish list for years, like a proposal to abandon the practice of re-evaluating long-term leases instead of automatically renewing them, which allowed federal regulators to plan around major changes to the landscape, such as new suburban developments.
Sgamma circulated the draft ― which she described as focusing on “increasing the competitiveness of federal lands” ― on Jan. 9, inviting her fellow group members to make changes. Some of Parks’ initial recommendations were cut from later drafts, but the agency has already taken action on one recommendation that survived: The Interior Department quietly ceased the Obama-era practice of planning local drilling sites according to local environmental concerns on Jan. 31. The industry had long argued that the practice created a redundant roadblock to new drilling projects.
“We’re very pleased,” Sgamma said at the time.
A handful of the most influential oil and gas developers in the country fund the Western Energy Alliance. Although it does not currently publicize the names of its members, the alliance has included Devon Energy, Halliburton, Anadarko Petroleum and Pioneer Natural Resources. Its political action committee donated $5,000 to Zinke’s campaigns while he served as Montana’s lone congressman.
The Western Energy Alliance fiercely opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate the oil and gas industry,sometimes to the point of adopting a siege mentality. It invited Rick Berman, known for his ruthless, corporate-backed PR campaigns against environmentalists, to address its members in 2014. At the event, Berman framed the struggle against environmental groups as “an endless war.”
The draft recommendations are not the only example of the Western Energy Alliance having an outsized voice in the Trump administration. Parks, who is not registered as a lobbyist, previously presented an Interior advisory group with 15 recommendations for scrapping protections for the greater sage-grouse, which the industry felt impeded new energy projects; the advisory group adopted 13 of them.
The Interior Department did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about Parks’ role in drafting the recommendations. Sgamma has defended her role in making policy recommendations to the Interior Department by noting she has subject matter expertise. “I’m not an alternate member of the Royalty Policy Committee because of my sparkling personality,” she told HuffPost.
Sgamma added that the Interior Department had considered scrapping several of the Western Energy Alliance’s least favorite regulations even before the formation of her working group.
But the alliance’s relationship with the Trump administration also stretches back many months.
Entries in Zinke’s calendar show he met with representatives of the alliance in April 2017. A brief prepared for the secretary reminded him of a Trump administration order that for every new regulation created, agencies must place two old regulations on the chopping block.
The brief recommended that Zinke ask the alliance lobbyists which regulations he should scrap. But it wasn’t a matter of urgency: The agency has already rolled back more than two regulations for every new rule, the brief made clear, with the result that it had “built [up] a credit.”
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