Striking A Nerve…

As Public Domain continues to break stories on the Trump Interior Department, the agency has resorted to insults and intimidation. We aren't going anywhere.

When we launched Public Domain back in March, we promised to deliver hard-hitting reporting on the Interior Department and other federal agencies and to shine light on the powerful interests influencing federal policy.

We’ve done that, consistently breaking stories that, in many cases, have been picked up by national news outlets.

In response, President Donald Trump’s team at Interior has taken a schoolyard bully approach. In recent months, when Public Domain has reached out for comment on a story, agency press flacks have attempted to intimidate and disparage Public Domain, while largely refusing to answer questions — the job that they signed up for and that the American public pays them to do.

In June, for instance, we first reported that Matt Giacona, the acting director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has worked on a range of policy matters since joining the Trump administration that overlap with his past work as an offshore oil industry lobbyist, potentially violating federal ethics rules.

When Public Domain reached out to Interior about what we’d uncovered, an Interior spokesperson told our contributing reporter: “If you’re going to waste everyone’s time making baseless accusations, maybe think about getting a real job first.”

Fast forward to this week. Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee cited Public Domain’s reporting in a letter demanding that Interior’s Inspector General investigate whether Giacona violated ethics rules.

Here’s a small smattering of other official Interior Department statements that have landed in our inboxes and that your tax dollars were used to produce. Some were not included in our previous reporting, as you’ll soon understand why.

• “Public Domain is not a news outlet but a blog started by unemployed reporters - hence the gmail address used to reach out to the Department.” (We received this same statement twice in a single week in response to two separate inquiries)

• “Try using Google next time.”

• “...you were fired…and now ‘report’ for a webpage you created instead of finding real employment…” (No one at Public Domain was fired.)

• “It is beyond unacceptable that an internal document in the draft/deliberative process is being shared with the media before a decision point has been made. Not only is this unacceptable behavior, it is irresponsible for a media outlet to publish a draft document. We will take this leak of an internal, pre-decisional document very seriously and find out who is responsible.”

There are more where those came from, but you get the idea.

Here’s the bottom line. The Trump administration can call Public Domain whatever it wants, hurl insults and attempt to intimidate us. We aren’t going to stop digging into and breaking news on this powerful agency. We’ve shown the type of deep reporting we can do and are committed to defending the public’s right to know.

But we need your help. This sort of hard-hitting, mission-driven journalism costs money. If you are a free subscriber, please consider upgrading to a paid membership, which will allow us to keep producing the hard-hitting, mission-driving journalism that this moment demands. Share us with friends and family. And reach out with any tips, story ideas and feedback.

Thank you for all the support thus far. We are just getting started.

— Chris, Jimmy & Roque