She Covered Trump’s Interior Chief At Fox News. Now She’s His Flack.
Aubrie Spady was recently hired as Interior’s deputy press secretary. Her father is a longtime conservative operative with close ties to the MAGA world.
During her four years at Fox News, Aubrie Spady helped lead the conservative news outlet’s energy and environmental coverage, consistently elevating the voices of those pushing Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda and condemning President Joe Biden’s climate and conservation policies.
In January, Spady wrote a story on Doug Burgum’s nomination to serve as President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary, focusing on his pledge to “drill, baby, drill.” Once Burgum was confirmed to the powerful post in February, Spady shifted to friendly coverage of how the former North Dakota governor was “taking aim” at the Biden administration’s environmental and climate policies. And a few weeks into Burgum’s tenure, Spady landed an “exclusive” story about how the Interior Department cafeteria had remained shuttered during Biden’s presidency — a piece that cited “a source close to the situation” and included a statement from Burgum in which he bemoaned how few people were showing up to the office.
Burgum and his team seem to have liked what they saw from the young reporter. In March, Spady was appointed as the Interior Department’s deputy press secretary, where she is now churning out social media videos and press statements, including one last week in which she impugned a Public Domain reporter for inquiring about an agency official's potential conflicts of interest.
Spady’s hiring came as the Trump administration stacked federal agencies with loyalists who have systematically worked to gut agency resources and force out thousands of career scientists and other civil servants. Her father, David Spady, is a longtime conservative operative and media consultant who maintains extraordinary access to Trump administration officials and GOP lawmakers, which he documents in detail on his public Instagram page.
During Trump’s first term, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tapped David Spady to serve on an advisory panel focused on hunting, shooting sports and big game conservation, as I reported for HuffPost at the time.
Much of Aubrie Spady’s reporting at Fox appeared to dovetail with her father’s work, marked by the same animosity he has for government regulation and the environmental and climate movements.
She wrote about California water use and wildfires, including a piece in January titled “Smelt test: Trump order overrides California's fish-protecting rules to maximize water supply.” In 2014, her father produced a documentary about California’s water shortage, which he blamed on “radical environmentalists” and Washington bureaucrats who he said had prioritized protecting the delta smelt, an imperiled fish, over the needs of farmers.
She also wrote about wolves. In 2013, her father produced a documentary, titled “Wolves in Government Clothing,” in which he argued that wolves and people are “incompatible” and that the Endangered Species Act has empowered “predators” in government to “destroy people’s lives.”
At the time of both films, David Spady was California state director of Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing political advocacy group that fossil fuel tycoons David and Charles Koch founded in 2004.
Then there are her father’s friends and allies in the GOP, some of whom Spady seemingly had easy access to while working as a Fox News reporter. Her father, a Montana native, is particularly close to Congressman Zinke and other Montana Republicans. On his Instagram page, he often posts pictures of himself with Zinke, as well as now-Sen. Sheehy, Sen. Steve Daines, Rep. Troy Downing and Gov. Greg Gianforte.
When former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy officially launched his Senate bid on June 27, 2023, he gave Aubrie Spady the exclusive story. Two days prior, her father posted a picture of himself with Sheehy and Zinke.
When Zinke officially endorsed Sheehy the following week, Aubrie Spady again had the exclusive. A few weeks after Spady’s back-to-back scoops on Sheehy’s campaign and Zinke’s endorsement, her father posted pictures of himself and Zinke dining in Bozeman and fly fishing on the Yellowstone River.
Spady continued covering Montana campaigns throughout 2024, including Sheehy’s successful run against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Zinke’s re-election in Montana's 1st Congressional District. By then, Spady’s sister, Ashley, was working as a scheduler in Zinke’s office. Spady authored the Fox News story on Zinke’s victory.
Spady also landed exclusive interviews with former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), another close contact of her father’s, and Daines while he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
When Trump was re-elected to the White House in November, David Spady was at the election-night watch party in West Palm Beach, Florida. When Trump was inaugurated in January, he posted pictures of himself and Aubrie at inauguration events in Washington, while she was still employed at Fox. Around that same time, he also posted a picture of himself and Burgum mingling at a social event and wrote, “Congratulations to the next Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum.”
Aubrie Spady and her father did not respond to Public Domain’s requests for comment. Charlotte Taylor, Burgum’s press secretary, did not address Public Domain’s specific queries. Instead, she sent a statement that defended Spady as "an incredible talent" who "earned her spot here at the Department," while continuing the agency’s streak of attacking our outlet with false accusations.
Since joining Interior, Spady has been featured in weekly agency videos, titled “Inside Interior,” which have largely focused on the agency’s efforts to boost fossil fuel drilling, mining and other development across federally managed lands and waters.
Last month, Public Domain reached out to Interior for comment on a story about Matt Giacona, a former oil and gas lobbyist who Trump tapped to oversee offshore fossil fuel drilling as principal deputy director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Documents Public Domain obtained show Giacona has worked on a number of issues that overlap with his previous lobbying work, which ethics experts argue raise significant ethics questions.
In an email response to that inquiry, Spady ignored Public Domain’s specific questions and instead disparaged the integrity of our contributing reporter, suggesting she is a left-wing activist and encouraging her to "think about getting a real job."
“These ‘concerns’ from your supposed ethics experts are ridiculous, but not surprising coming from an individual from Nancy Pelosi's liberal district with a history of working for left-leaning organizations that are actively making sad attempts to undermine President Trump's historic America First agenda,” Spady wrote. “If you're going to waste everyone's time making baseless accusations, maybe think about getting a real job first. The Department is focused on much more important issues, like making life better and more affordable for the American people, than responding to unsubstantiated claims by anonymous ‘sources’ from someone using a liberal college email."
While Spady used an anonymous source for her scoop on the Interior Department cafeteria, Public Domain’s story on Giacona did not feature comments from anonymous sources.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Spady graduated from Liberty University in 2023 and got her start in media as an administrative assistant at River Public Affairs Group, her father’s media and political consulting shop. She joined Fox News as an intern in 2021 and was hired on full-time in 2022. In a September 2023 post to social media, her father wrote he was “lucky to have my daughter Aubrie join me at political events as she begins a career in media at FOX News.”
In May of this year, a month or so after Spady was hired onto Burgum’s communications team, David Spady celebrated her new federal career, posting pictures of the two of them at Interior’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
“After four years with FOX News, Aubrie joined the Trump Administration. #ProudDad,” he wrote, noting that he walked her to her first day on the job.
Norah Findley contributed research to this story.
I think those Department of Interior videos are godawful propaganda. But what do I know...🤷🏼♂️