Major Burgum Donor Lands Plum Job at Interior Department

William Hague is a former telecom executive, and a campaign contributor to Doug Burgum, the current Interior Secretary.

Bill Hague (left) on a recent trip to the Marshall Islands. Source: U.S. Embassy Kolonia

William “Bill” Hague is a long-time telecom executive who for years worked at AT&T and, more recently, at a company called Tillman Infrastructure, which specializes in cell tower construction. Earlier this year, he was appointed as the principal deputy assistant secretary of insular and international affairs at the Interior Department, where he will help oversee the federal government’s responsibilities to U.S. territories like Guam, American Samoa, the northern Mariana Islands and more.

While DOI’s office of insular and international affairs is sometimes staffed with loyal political operatives — the office in Trump’s first term was led by scandal-plagued Douglas Domenech, a GOP apparatchik and close personal friend of former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt — Hague’s elevation was curious. Hague does not appear to have been a fossil fuel lobbyist or a MAGA operative like so many other appointees at DOI. According to his resume, which Public Domain obtained via a public records request, he has spent most of his career in the telecom sector in Seattle, Atlanta and New York. The overseas experience mentioned on his resume, including travel to Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, does not appear to involve the key territories that are the focus of his new job.

So why did this telecom executive land such a plum position within a cabinet-level Department? The Interior Department in a statement said that Hague’s “track record of forging international partnerships and driving large-scale infrastructure growth makes him a valuable asset to the Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular and International Affairs.”

But Public Domain sifted through campaign donation data and discovered that Hague has also been a major campaign contributor to Doug Burgum, the current Interior Secretary. Whether the two men have some sort of personal connection is unclear, but in 2023, during Burgum’s failed run for the Republican presidential nomination, Hague donated $3,300 to the election effort. That sum was the maximum that an individual could donate to a federal candidate at the time.

A screenshot of Hague’s 2023 donation to Burgum.

North Dakota campaign finance data also show that Hague has donated large sums to Burgum’s gubernatorial efforts in the past. Burgum was the governor of North Dakota from 2016 to 2024.

In March 2016, for instance, Hague donated $10,000 to Burgum’s gubernatorial campaign. In February 2018, he again donated $10,000 to Burgum’s campaign coffers. In total, Hague has donated at least $23,300 to Burgum’s political ventures over the last decade.

Whatever Hague’s other qualifications for his new political appointment, which involves international travel on the taxpayers’ dime, his past as a lavish Burgum donor adds new context to his presence at DOI.