Investigate Zinke

Democrats promise to investigate Zinke if House flips

Lawmakers hoping to take control of key committees are pushing for probes of the Interior Department.

By ANTHONY ADRAGNA and BEN LEFEBVRE

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke will face a barrage of congressional inquiries into his business dealings, travels, political activities and relations with industry if Democrats win the House in November, according to lawmakers who hope to lead the chamber next year.

Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has already unsuccessfully demanded a hearing this month on a “Culture of Corruption” surrounding the Cabinet secretary, including Zinke’s taxpayer-funded travels to political fundraisers and handling of an American Indian casino project in Connecticut.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who would be in line to chair the House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee, listed a litany of possible starting points for probes by his panel, including a Montana real estate deal linked to the chairman of Halliburton that POLITICO first reported in June.

"Zinke is one the most ethically challenged members of the Cabinet and maybe one of the most ethically challenged secretaries of the Interior we’ve had in living memory," Connolly said in an interview. "[There’s] rich material here to look into his behavior and his fitness for continued service in the office."

An Interior spokeswoman said Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, is ready for whatever Democrats throw at him.

“In his 23 years of military service, and continued public service after that, Ryan Zinke has dealt with far more formidable opponents and never quit,” Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift told POLITICO. She did not answer specific questions.

Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) told POLITICO he doesn’t think Democrats will win back control of the House in the midterms, and he scoffed at the rhetoric from some that Zinke’s the most scandal-plagued of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members.

“That’s probably at best an overstatement,” Bishop said, adding he has “no clue” how Democrats would approach Zinke if they led the panel.

Democratic leaders are still weighing the oversight priorities they would pursue if they seize control of the chamber, but they say Zinke stands out in an administration that has already seen a flood of officials resign amid scandal in its first two years.

The secretary faces several open ethics investigations, from watchdogs including the Interior Department’s inspector general, into his interactions with lobbyists and oil industry heavyweights. He has also pursued controversial policy choices like proposing to open vast new swaths of offshore waters to drilling and slashing national monuments.

Besides the Montana deal, Connolly said he’s interested in Zinke’s travel practices; allegations that he threatened Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) with reprisals to her state after she voted against repealing Obamacare; a news conference he held with Florida Gov. Rick Scott purporting to remove that state from an offshore drilling plan; efforts to remove climate change from agency reports; and multiple possible violations of the Hatch Act prohibiting the use of federal resources for partisan activity.

As chairman, Connolly would have broad jurisdiction to probe Zinke's conduct.

But the most intense scrutiny would come from House Natural Resources, where Democrats including Grijalva ratcheted up pressure this week for an ethics probe by the committee’s Republican majority.

Zinke "has accumulated more confirmed federal investigations than the four previous secretaries — Democratic and Republican — combined," Grijalva and 13 other committee Democrats wrote in a letter dated Tuesday. "This committee has been conspicuously silent on those investigations and the multitudes of legal and ethical issues they raise. The time for that silence is over."

No such hearings are planned before the midterms, a spokeswoman for the committee's Republicans said.

Grijalva has also amassed a long list of questions about Zinke he wants answered. Committee Democrats say the Arizona representative has received just two responses to the 27 letters he’s sent to Interior officials this calendar year. But a Democratic victory would hand him the committee gavel — and new leverage to demand documents and testimony from the administration.

Natural Resources Democrats have hinted at some of their plans in an ongoing series of Medium posts alleging Republicans have "managed to ignore almost every important environmental issue we face." They said the majority ignored news about new mass species extinction and removal of climate change information from government websites, while pursuing instead a "wasteful and offensive" hearing on Native American rights.

“We’re going to be asking oversight questions that we’ve been asking for two years but have gotten no response on,” Grijalva told POLITICO.

House Democratic leaders are leaning toward giving higher priority to policy decisions than questions around Zinke's ethics, but they have not yet had a “robust conversation” about what shape their investigations may take if they lead the chamber, said Ashley Etienne, communications director and senior adviser for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

“This is one of the most ethically challenged administrations in history, but at the same time they’ve made policy decisions that have affected people’s lives in a short amount of time,” Etienne told POLITICO. “Our oversight would be on issues that directly affect people's lives.”

Zinke’s inner circle has already pushed back against some of the allegations that have led to investigations. His wife, Lola, has taken to Twitter multiple times to defend him from negative reports, including Interior‘s ordering doors for the secretary’s office that were reported to cost $139,000.

"Sec Zinke investigated for office doors ordered by previous administration too, no headline correction or apology- ever," she wrote in one tweet.

Zinke is certainly not the only prominent Trump appointee whose activities Democrats would put under a microscope. Others, like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and FEMA chief Brock Long, face their own alleged ethics problems, while the policy choices of officials like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler would surely fuel frequent congressional hearings. Democrats are also threatening to investigate sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh if the GOP-led Senate confirms him for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.

Several environmental organizations said they hoped the Natural Resources Committee would balance its oversight efforts evenly between Zinke’s ethics woes and policy decisions, especially the Interior Department’s proposed five-year drilling plan, efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil rigs and decisions to downsize several national monuments.

“The committee and the members on the committee who actually want to do their job have a big task ahead of them,” Nicole Ghio, fossil fuels program manager for Friends of the Earth, said in an interview. “It’s isn’t like there’s just one or two scandals facing Zinke and the other top members of the department. Where do you start?”

Still, some outside groups allied with House Democrats are reluctant to openly discuss possible approaches to oversight ahead of the midterms, in which Democrats must flip 23 seats to win back control of the chamber. They're anxious to avoid seeming overconfident with Hillary Clinton's upset defeat still in recent memory.

Not winning the House “may be unlikely, but Trump becoming president was unlikely,” said a source at one conservation group in talks with House Democratic staffers about possible Zinke investigation targets. “There’s still a hangover from 2016.”