Trump Admin Installs Project 2025 Author At Interior Department’s Watchdog Office
Dennis Kirk, a former associate director at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, comes to DOI after a controversial tenure at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Dennis Kirk, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump and an author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, has been installed within the Interior Department’s internal watchdog office, according to the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) condemned Kirk’s assignment in a statement Wednesday, calling him “a fake and fraudulent watchdog.”
“Everyone should have their eyes wide open,” Huffman said. “Each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump.”
Kirk’s new role is part of a broader trend that has seen the Trump administration tap loyalists for historically nonpartisan ethics and oversight positions. He joins Interior’s Office of Inspector General on the heels of a controversial stint at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he served as a senior advisor to former DNI Tulsi Gabbard and was later promoted to ODNI’s chief operating officer.
While there, Kirk reportedly worked within ODNI’s internal watchdog office while continuing to report to Gabbard — an arrangement that Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), the acting ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, condemned in a June 2025 letter to the acting Inspector General of the Intelligence Community.
Public Domain was first alerted to Kirk’s new Interior Department post via a statement that former DOI Inspector General Mark Greenblatt published to his website on Tuesday. Trump fired Greenblatt within days of being sworn into office last year, part of a broader purge of more than a dozen other inspectors general.
Greenblatt warned that Kirk’s placement within Interior OIG “should concern anyone who values independent government oversight.”
“This is not about one individual, or whether Mr. Kirk is capable or well-intentioned,” he wrote. “It is about whether placing a political operative inside an independent watchdog office creates a structural conflict that undermines public confidence in the office’s independence.”
A spokesperson at Interior OIG — an independent body that investigates potential waste, fraud, abuse, and ethical failures within the massive federal agency — declined to confirm Kirk’s new post.
“We do not have a comment on this matter, which relates to personnel issues,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
The Interior Department’s press office did not respond to Public Domain’s request for comment.
Interior OIG has received numerous requests from Congress to investigate potential misconduct by high-ranking agency officials, including Karen Budd-Falen, the agency’s No. 3 official who has deep financial ties to a controversial lithium mine in Nevada, and Matt Giacona, a former offshore oil industry lobbyist and a current top political official at Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Public Domain was the first to uncover the potential misconduct by both Budd-Falen and Giacona.
It remains unclear whether the Inspector General’s office has launched a probe into either official — or what Kirk’s tenure at the office could mean for current and future investigations.
“It’s no surprise the White House suddenly wants its own man inside the one place that Trump’s cronies still have reason to fear,” Huffman said.
During the first Trump administration, Kirk served in senior positions at the Office of Personnel Management. Prior to rejoining the current Trump team, Kirk was an associate director at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, where he co-authored a chapter of Project 2025, the sweeping policy blueprint that MAGA operatives compiled to guide Trump in a second term. He was also featured in a 29-minute Project 2025 training video on background checks and security clearances.
In his statement, Greenblatt, who served as Interior’s inspector general during both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, said placing someone with Kirk’s background inside an IG’s office “raises serious questions about the independence of one of the federal government’s most important accountability institutions.”
“Inspectors general are not political allies,” he wrote. “Nor are they political adversaries. They are the taxpayers’ watchdogs tasked with conducting fair, objective, and independent oversight. An inspector general should never have to convince the public that he or she is independent. The structure of the office should make that self-evident.”
Kirk’s installation at Interior follows Trump nominating Michael Chamberlain, a dark money political operative, to serve as director of the Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency responsible for preventing conflicts of interest and ethical violations within the executive branch.
Oh. More damage incoming then