House Dems Demand Probe Into Top Interior Official, Citing Public Domain’s Reporting
Lawmakers are calling for an internal investigation after Public Domain revealed that Karen Budd-Falen has financial ties to the massive Thacker Pass lithium mine.
Democratic lawmakers are calling for a federal ethics probe into Karen Budd-Falen, the long time conservative operative who is serving in the No. 3 position at President Trump’s Interior Department. In a letter sent Tuesday to Interior’s acting Inspector General, Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) said Budd-Falen “failed to come clean to Congress about her financial and ethical dealings” and that new evidence of “an undisclosed conflict of interest … demands immediate investigation.”
“It appears Ms. Budd-Falen may have used her power in the Interior Department to give her family a $3.5 million windfall by fast-tracking a mining project and letting a multi-billion-dollar corporation skip an environmental review designed to keep communities safe from polluting projects,” wrote the lawmakers, who both serve on the House Natural Resources Committee.
“Recently uncovered evidence … raises additional serious questions, including whether Ms. Budd-Falen’s financial interests and official activities may have implicated federal ethics and conflict-of-interest restrictions, and possibly violations of federal criminal law,” they added.
The letter, which directly cites Public Domain and our co-publishing partner High Country News, comes in the wake of an investigation this outlet published in December that revealed Budd-Falen’s husband struck a deal in 2018 to sell water rights from one of the family’s ranches to the developer of the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada. The lucrative arrangement was finalized not long after Budd-Falen joined the first Trump administration as a top legal official at the Interior Department in early November 2018. Budd-Falen failed to disclose her family’s financial entanglement with the mine on numerous government financial disclosure forms between 2018 and 2021. And in November 2019, she met with executives from the mine’s parent company while working as a top Interior Department appointee during Trump’s first term, according to documents first obtained by Public Domain. The first Trump administration ultimately fast-tracked approval for the mine shortly before leaving office in January 2021.
You can read a key portion of the lawmakers’ letter here:
Asked about Tuesday’s letter, an Interior Department spokesperson called Budd-Fallen “an invaluable member of the Interior team” and dismissed what she described as “baseless accusations.”
After Public Domain and High Country News published the investigation into Budd-Falen in December, our reporting was cited in a subsequent story by The New York Times, which revealed that Lithium Nevada Corp. paid Budd-Falen’s husband $3.5 million for water rights from their family ranching operation — a deal that was contingent on federal regulators approving the mine. In January 2021, in the waning days of Trump’s first term in office, the Bureau of Land Management approved the project, which includes some 5,700 acres of public land.
Our reporting was also featured on Rachel Maddow’s evening newscast.
The New York Times first reported the letter demanding an ethics probe into Budd-Falen.
Conservationists slammed Budd-Falen’s conduct following the release of the lawmakers’ letter.
“The internal documents in this letter are incredibly damning. At the very least, Secretary Burgum must suspend Karen Budd-Falen pending the outcome of any investigation,” said Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “Her lack of candor to ethics officials casts a shadow on anything that crosses her desk today, and on everything she has worked on during the Trump administration.”
Public Domain continues its efforts to obtain records related to Budd-Falen, including her ethics agreement, which the Interior Department has yet to release publicly.
Good, but what’s the likelihood it happens🫤