mike ingram
<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lordy, let there be tapes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva and committee member Rep. Katie Porter are investigating an alleged bribery scheme in which they believe a real estate developer donated to a super PAC aligned in support of former President Donald Trump in exchange for pardons for two other men.</font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The two Democrats <a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2022.12.02%20Grijalva%20Porter%20to%20Haaland%20re%20Hammond%20pardon%20REDACTED.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wrote </a>to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday, calling on her department to release all documents related to the pardons of Dwight and Steven Hammond, who had been convicted in </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2012 of s<b>etting fires on public lands they had leased after illegally killing deer on the land. </b>The two men were sentenced to five years in prison with time served in 2015, sparking right-wing protests including a 40-day armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.</span></font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Grijalva (Ariz.) and Porter (Calif.) believe <b>real estate developer Mike Ingram</b>—who was the subject of the Natural Resources Committee's first-ever criminal referral regarding another potential bribery case involving a clean water permit for one of his developments—secured the Hammonds' pardons in 2018 with a $10,000 donation to the America First Action, Inc. Super PAC.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the letter, Ingram's assistant <a href="https://naturalresources.house.gov/media/press-releases/chair-grijalva-rep-porter-seek-documents-on-another-incident-of-potential-bribery-under-the-trump-administration-" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">emailed</a> a Trump Interior Department official on May 25, 2018, attaching two articles arguing for the Hammonds to be pardoned. On July 1, a Republican lawmaker who supported the Hammonds tweeted that Trump was "seriously considering" pardoning them.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One day later, Ingram made his donation, and just over a week after that Trump announced he was pardoning the Hammonds.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Mr. Ingram made only one other $10,000 donation during the 2017-2018 nonpresidential election cycle," wrote Grijalva and Porter. "That donation was the subject of the committee's criminal referral regarding the Villages at Vigneto development [in Arizona]. In that case, <b>Ingram and 12 other individuals, many of whom maintained personal or professional relationships with Ingram, donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars</b> to the <b>Trump Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee </b>on the same day or within just a few days that a major federal action regarding Vigneto was made in Ingram's favor."</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The parallels between the Vigneto case and the Hammonds' pardons raise significant concerns about another potential case of bribery under the Trump administration and warrant further investigation," they added.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On social media, Porter noted that she and Grijalva uncovered the evidence of Ingram's alleged bribe "while investigating a possible $240,000 quid pro quo scheme between the Trump administration and a developer.</b>"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're requesting documents to help us get to the bottom of [the Ingram case]," Porter <a href="https://twitter.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1598779740135034913" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said</a>. "I have zero tolerance for corruption."</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/08/politics/interior-department-arizona-development-bernhardt/index.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/08/politics/interior-department-arizona-development-bernhardt/index.html</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trms)</font></div><div><div class="elleafmedia elleafmedia--sourced-paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the summer of 2017, Arizona developer Mike Ingram's proposed housing and golf course project in the desert was facing a road block because of a decision by the Department of the Interior.</font></p></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A field supervisor for the US Fish and Wildlife Service had determined that it was "reasonably certain" that threatened and endangered species could be harmed.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But that decision suddenly changed following a secret breakfast meeting at a Montana hunting lodge between Ingram -- a donor to President Donald Trump and co-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks -- and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/05/politics/david-bernhardt-conflicting-calendars-interior/index.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">David Bernhardt</a>, then the Trump administration's deputy Interior secretary.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the meeting, which did not appear in Bernhardt's official calendar and has not been previously reported, the field supervisor says he was pressured to reverse his decision, allowing the project to move ahead.</font></div><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-5 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I felt pressured to reverse my decision ... in simplest terms, I was rolled," Steve Spangle, then a 30-year veteran of the Fish and Wildlife Service, told CNN in an interview. "I made a decision, which was my authority to make in Arizona, and that was overruled by higher-ups in the administration."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyread-all" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The meeting is one of at least 11 interactions Ingram had with top officials at the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration, according to a CNN review of emails and calendars.</font></div><div class="elembedded elembedded--standard" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 780px; z-index: 0;"><div class="elimage--standard jsimage--standard" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; cursor: default; margin-bottom: 30px; width: 300px; margin-top: 10px; float: left; margin-right: 30px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="mediacaption elgallery_image-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 13px 0px 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; position: relative; border: 0px;"><div class="element-raw appearance-standard" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former FWS official Steve Spangle</font></div></div></div></div></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The meetings and the reversal suggest yet another example of Trump administration officials siding with executives and business leaders in the industries for which they have oversight.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lawsuit filed by environmental groups earlier this year has put the project on hold once again. The House Committee on Natural Resources is also investigating what happened. <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/07/09/2019-07-03.rg.to.bernhardt.on.villages.at.vigneto_redacted.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva</a> has <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/07/09/2019-07-03.rg.to.blm.on.villages.at.vigneto.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">asked Interior for documents</a> and raising "questions about whether a key permit decision at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was inappropriately reversed."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 32px 0px -5px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 500; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 40px; font-feature-settings: " kern="kern" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A phone call and a reversal</font></h3></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Villages at Vigneto is designed as a development of 28,000 homes, golf courses and a resort community planned for the sprawling patch of mesquite scrub expanse just east of Benson, Arizona.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Local officials welcome the development; Benson Mayor Toney King said it's desperately needed to bring jobs back to the area. "We've been fighting really hard to get growth here," King told CNN. "We've had generations of kids that have left and they can't come back. There are no jobs."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interior declined to answer any of CNN's specific questions for this story, and instead provided a one sentence statement: "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reexamined the issue at hand and using the best available science as required under the Endangered Species Act issued the same exact conclusion."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lanny Davis, a prominent Democratic attorney representing <b>Ingram's El Dorado Holdings</b>, told CNN there is no evidence of any political influence by his client, and any suggestion of influence is "innuendo."</font></div><div class="elembedded elembedded--standard" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 780px; z-index: 0;"><div class="elimage--standard jsimage--standard" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; cursor: default; margin-bottom: 30px; width: 300px; margin-top: 10px; float: left; margin-right: 30px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="mediacaption elgallery_image-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 13px 0px 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; position: relative; border: 0px;"><div class="element-raw appearance-standard" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mayor Toney King, Benson, Arizona</font></div></div></div></div></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the environmental concerns surrounding the area go back more than a decade because of its proximity to the San Pedro River and the habitats of endangered and threatened species. The remote desert landscape was initially slated for development in the early 2000s. The Environmental Protection Agency has long been opposed to building on the site, writing in 2005 that it "represented a substantial and unacceptable impact on aquatic resources of national importance," and the EPA stance has not changed since. Opponents of the project also say the aquifer that feeds the river could be impacted.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Despite those environmental concerns, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved a Clean Water Act permit in 2006, but the 2008 recession forced the owners to sell.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ingram bought the property with his company El Dorado Benson LLC in 2014, renaming the development the "Villages at Vigneto," with the intention of building using the 2006 Army Corps permit.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That permit was suspended, however, in 2016 after six environmental groups sued and demanded an environmental consultation by the Fish and Wildlife Service.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Spangle was the top official in Arizona evaluating development projects and their impact on the environment and endangered species</b>. In October 2016, he wrote a decision about the Villages at Vigneto that "direct and indirect effects to threatened and endangered species... are reasonably certain to occur," referring to the western yellow-billed cuckoo, the southwestern willow flycatcher and northern Mexican gartersnake.</font></div><div class="elembedded elembedded--standard" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; width: 780px; z-index: 0;"><div class="elimage--standard jsimage--standard" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; cursor: default; margin-bottom: 30px; width: 300px; margin-top: 10px; float: left; margin-right: 30px;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="mediacaption elgallery_image-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 13px 0px 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; position: relative; border: 0px;"><div class="element-raw appearance-standard" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix This August, 2013 photo provided by Point Blue Conservation Science shows a yellow-billed cuckoo, which has made the western United States its breeding ground for many years. But the migratory bird, which otherwise lives in Latin America, has seen its population dwindle in the past few decades because its habitats have been marred. NThe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, announced that the western population of the yellow-billed cuckoo has been listed as a threatened species and will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The bird resides in 12 western states and in Mexico and Canada, but Arizona has the largest population. (AP Photo/Point Blue Conservation Science, Mark Dettling)</font></div></div></div></div></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He ordered that a full scale "biological assessment," which can take months and bring additional litigation, was needed before the project could move ahead. He also wrote that the Clean Water Act permit issued earlier by the Army Corps "should not have been issued."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spangle assumed the project would move ahead with the assessment he ordered, like other projects he had worked on. Then in August 2017, he says, he received an unusual phone call from Peg Romanik, an associate solicitor at the Interior Department.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[S]he told me that she had gotten a call from a high-level political appointee within the Department of the Interior who informed her that our position out here, in Arizona, was not the position of the administration," Spangle told CNN.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During that call, Spangle said he was strongly pressured to reverse his decision on Vigneto; his reversal would remove a major hurdle for the project and allow it to move forward without the in-depth biological assessment he asked for.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Romanik met with Bernhardt at 8:30 a.m. the same day that she called Spangle, according to Bernhardt's calendar, which does not list what was discussed.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The phone call and reversal were first <a href="https://tucson.com/news/local/ex-federal-official-i-got-rolled-by-trump-administration-to/article_e6d7a688-0a63-5f88-b993-24384d87a4bd.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">reported by the Arizona Daily Star</a>, but the name of the solicitor and her meeting with Bernhardt have not been previously reported.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spangle said it was the first time in his career that he was asked to change an official decision he had made, saying it "wasn't a good feeling, but I felt I had a duty. I work for the administration, I have to do what I'm told, and so I did."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 26, 2017, Spangle issued a new decision, reversing his earlier letter, and allowing the project to move ahead without the full biological assessment. He retired four months later.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Romanik did not return a call requesting comment.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 32px 0px -5px; padding: 0px; font-weight: 500; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 40px; font-feature-settings: " kern="kern" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Developer's contacts with Trump administration</font></h3></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ingram is a wealthy and powerful figure in Arizona. El Dorado Holdings is one of the largest private landholders in the southwestern US, with assets exceeding $1 billion. Ingram is also one of the owners of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the state's Major League Baseball team.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CNN has found a trail of contacts between the developer and top government officials, along with political contributions, that raise questions of access and influence.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ingram co-chaired a "Camouflage and Cufflinks" fundraiser around the time of Trump's inauguration, which offered a private reception with the President, and a hunting trip with Donald Trump Jr, and Eric Trump in exchange for a $500,000 donation. The event was canceled after ethical questions surfaced over buying access to the President and his sons.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>An avid hunter, Ingram is a director of the non-profit Safari Club International Foundation, which Bernhardt formerly represented as an attorney, according to Bernhardt's financial disclosure statement.</b></font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Ingram was also appointed by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to the International Wildlife Conservation Council, an official federal group set up to advise on issues related to "citizens traveling to foreign nations to engage in hunting,"</b> according to its website.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Several weeks after Spangle received the phone call asking for his reversal, Ingram made a one- time $10,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund. Since November 2015, Ingram donated $50,900 to political committees supporting Trump. In the same time frame, Ingram donated $6,050 to Democrats.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Since the beginning of the Trump administration, Ingram or his representatives had at least 11 meetings, emails or phone calls with top officials at Interior and EPA, including one meeting with Zinke, two meetings and three emails with<b> then-EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt,</b> and at least five meetings with Bernhardt, who succeeded Zinke as Interior secretary earlier this year.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ingram declined CNN's request for an interview, but Davis, El Dorado Holding's attorney, says his client has done nothing wrong.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The innuendo is, well, he's close to Trump, there must've been political influence," Davis said in an interview, adding, "That's just innuendo. I can't negate that because it's a quote 'feeling.'"</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Davis confirmed to CNN the meetings between Ingram and administration officials, he said there was nothing untoward about them.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Davis points to a <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/07/09/fws.letter.june.12.-.spangle.allegations.-.reply.to.ace.5-23-19.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">recent letter</a> sent by the US and Fish and Wildlife Service to the Army Corps of Engineers, which reiterated that the reversal by Spangle was the correct course of action. The letter also said, "we take the allegations made by Mr. Spangle seriously," and that a re-evaluation was done at the local level without influence from regional or Washington, DC headquarters.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"[T]he local Fish and Wildlife Service... [said] that the likely impact on endangered species is not sufficient to stop this project," Davis said, adding that the facts contradict any suggestion that the federal agency was influenced by Ingram. "If you focus on facts, the facts are that the Army Corps of Engineers made a decision on the facts under the law," Davis added.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter, dated June 12, 2019, was given to CNN by Davis just days after CNN requested an interview with Ingram, and was a response to a <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/07/10/2019-05-23-army-corps-to-fws-villages-at-vigneto.pdf" target="_blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s;">May 23 request by the Army Corps of Engineers</a>.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CNN sent Interior a detailed list of questions about the Vigneto project asking about the phone call to Spangle, why he was pressured to reverse his decision, why Bernhardt had a secret meeting with Ingram, and whether that led to the pressure on Spangle to reverse his order. CNN also asked to do an interview with Bernhardt. Interior declined to answer those questions.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmentalists who oppose the project in Arizona are livid.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think it's the most blatant example most people have seen of how people with power and money, connections and influence, have changed how the system is supposed to work, " said Tricia Gerrodette, a local resident and activist. "We're supposed to work under the laws and science. And science was overridden here."</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gerrodette is on the board of the Tucson Audubon Society, one of six environmental groups which filed a joint lawsuit earlier this year demanding the Army Corps complete a full Environmental Impact Statement, and the Corps once again suspended the permit for the Villages at Vigneto development. The case is still pending.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">El Dorado Holdings has argued it does not need a permit to begin construction, and it would be willing to change the footprint of the development to avoid federal waters if needed.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But with Spangle's reversal and the Fish and Wildlife Service backing that decision it is expected the corps will lift the suspension on the original 2006 permit. Environmentalists vow they will fight on in the courts, because they believe the project will destroy the underground aquifer.</font></div><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-55 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The development will ruin this area. It will drain the aquifer and kill it," Gerrodette said.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clarification: This story has been clarified to reflect that the suspension is expected to be lifted from the original 2006 permit, and updated to include the May 23 request by the Army Corps of Engineers.</font></span></div></ul></div><p class="zn-bodyparagraph zn-bodyfooter" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.375; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CNN's Collette Richards contributed to this report.</font></p></ul></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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