Democratic Lawmakers Demand Interior DOGE Leader’s Financial, Ethics Docs
Documents obtained by Public Domain raise ethics questions about former oil executive Tyler Hassen's investments.
UPDATE: A day after two Democratic lawmakers sent a letter seeking Tyler Hassen's financial and ethics documents, Hassen was replaced as Interior's Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget. Michael Boren, who is awaiting Senate confirmation to oversee the U.S. Forest Service, has assumed the post, per a secretarial order that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum amended on Wednesday.
PREVIOUSLY: Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday requested documents detailing the financial holdings of Tyler Hassen, the former oil industry executive charged with spearheading the Trump administration’s purge of civil servants across the Interior Department.
A letter sent by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, raises concerns that the DOGE operative may have retained investments in industries that Interior directly overseas.
“Given Mr. Hassen’s significant role in ‘reorganizing’ the Department, indiscriminately purging employees, and making critical funding decisions, information regarding his financial disclosure, ethics agreement, and any conflicts of interest are important for ensuring the actions he takes benefit the American people rather than his own financial interests and should be made public,” reads the letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, which Huffman’s office shared exclusively with Public Domain.
The lawmakers requested Burgum and his team turn over all of Hassen’s financial disclosures, any ethics waivers, recusals or divestments, as well as his calendars and daily schedules, no later that Sept. 16.
“Mr. Hassen’s financial entanglements are consistent with many others across the administration,” the Democratic lawmakers added. “We remain concerned that his actions at the Department may be influenced by the prospect of personal gain through the weakening of agencies tasked with regulating the fossil fuel and mining sectors to which he has significant financial connections.”
Documents that Public Domain recently obtained shed additional light on these "entanglements," and raise questions about whether or when Hassen divested of energy-related holdings that could appear to create a conflict of interest. Most notably, he appears to have held onto stock in Albemarle Corporation as the administration moved to fast-track the company’s lithium mining project in Nevada.
An early member of Elon Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency, Hassen was embedded at the Interior Department in late January, as Public Domain first reported. In March, Burgum signed a secretarial order elevating the former oil industry executive to the role of Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget at Interior, a position that gave him broad authority to reorganize and downsize the department.
Early in his tenure at the agency, Hassen received guidance for how to avoid financial and other potential conflicts of interest. Those communications from Interior ethics officials, which Public Domain obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, included a list of companies that high-ranking department employees are prohibited from investing in, including major oil, gas, solar, wind and mining companies.
While Albemarle's operations on federal land fall below the 10,000-acre threshold for a mining company to end up on the prohibited stocks list, Interior’s ethics office specifically noted in its communication to Hassen that “this list does not include other private companies that have interests in federal lands, although investment in such companies is still prohibited."
On April 18, the Trump administration announced the first batch of mining projects to receive expedited treatment under the FAST-41 program, established in 2015 to streamline environmental reviews for infrastructure projects. That initial list of 10 projects included Albemarle's proposed 1,600-acre expansion of its Silver Peak lithium mine, located on federal land in southwest Nevada.
As chair of President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, Burgum has played a key role in building out the administration’s list of FAST-41 projects. The Bureau of Land Management, which Burgum oversees as Interior chief, is currently weighing whether to approve the mine expansion.
At the time of the FAST-41 announcement, Hassen still held between $1,001 and $15,000 in Albermarle stock, according to his April 21 financial disclosure, the most recent version that’s been made available to the public.
It remains unclear if Hassen sold that stock or other energy investments in the months since. Neither he nor the Interior Department responded to Public Domain’s repeated requests for comment.
Prior to joining the Trump administration, Hassen earned a combined $3.9 million annually as an executive at Basin Holdings, an oilfield services and industrial manufacturing company, and a partner at Talus Group Holdings, a private investment firm, according to his financial disclosure. John Fitzgibbons, an oil industry magnate, is the founder and chairman of both companies.
In that document, Hassen reported 254 individual stock holdings, at the time worth between $2.14 million and $7.55 million. He also laid out a timeline for selling his equity in Basin and Talus, with $3.7 million to be paid out to him in installments through mid-2026.
Hassen’s extensive financial portfolio first drew attention in May, when the Associated Press reported certain details in his disclosure, including investments in several oil, gas and mining firms. At the time, conservation groups condemned what they viewed as numerous conflicts of interest and called on Hassen to divest those assets.
As of late April, Hassen had filed only one periodic transaction report, in which high-level federal employees must disclose securities transactions greater than $1,000. That report, dated April 21 and which Public Domain obtained from Interior’s ethics office early last month, shows Hassen sold up to $65,000 worth of shares in two S&P exchange-traded funds. There are no individual stock sales listed in the report. It is unclear if Hassen filed any subsequent transaction reports and, if so, whether those included the sale of Albemarle or other energy investments.
Under executive branch ethics rules, employees covered by the public financial disclosure requirements are required to file period transaction forms "not later than 45 days after the transaction."
In early July, approximately two weeks before Hassen publicly announced he would soon be leaving the Interior Department, he received a certificate of divestiture from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The document allowed Hassen to defer paying capital gains tax on the sale of 2,230 shares in 35 different companies, including the technology, semiconductor and energy industries. The stocks were worth approximately $403,000 on July 10, the date OGE issued the certificate, according to Public Domain’s analysis.
A fact sheet on certificates of divestiture notes that OGE officials review requests from executive branch employees to determine, among other things, “whether divestiture is reasonably necessary to avoid a conflict of interest.” The certificates allow employees to “defer the payment of capital gains tax by reinvesting the proceeds of a sale into ‘permitted property,’” it states.
Hassen’s certificate covers only some of the investments that previously drew attention. The OGE-approved divestments include nearly $4,000 worth of stock in Archrock Inc., a Houston, Texas-based natural gas compression services company, and nearly $2,500 in stock in WEC Energy Group, a Wisconsin-based electricity and natural gas company. But the document does not show Hassen moving to divest his shares in Albemarle or Quanta Services, which owns dozens of energy companies.
Kate Groetzinger, communications manager at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group, called the lack of transparency surrounding Hassen’s financial holdings “alarming.”
"Interior department employees shouldn't hold a financial stake in the companies that mine and drill on public lands... but it looks like that's exactly what Tyler Hassen did,” she said in an email. “Elon Musk may be gone, but DOGE's reign of corruption will take years to root out. It takes a special disregard for American values to do all that while also firing thousands of civil servants who care for our parks and public lands."
In late July, Hassen signaled he would exit the agency on Aug. 1, telling the New York Times that his six-month commitment had “come to a close.” He described his stint in the Trump administration — during which he was given sweeping authority to cut staff and resources across the agency and its bureaus — as “the honor of a lifetime.”
Yet Hassen appears to still be at the agency. As of Thursday, he still lists himself as an Interior employee on his LinkedIn profile. In a piece published Aug. 18, E&E News wrote that his ongoing presence “is fueling speculation that he’s planning to wrap up a major reorganization or downsizing effort before he leaves.”
Interior Department employees have used words like “terrorizing” to describe what Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE have done inside the agency. Asked in February about his role in the mass-downsizing of government, Hassen told Fox News he “100 percent” sees it as his patriotic duty.
“I feel like this is me giving back to the country,” he said.
In their letter Tuesday, Huffman and Dexter argued that Hassen’s actions at Interior have “done little more than undermine the systems and staff responsible for protecting the public interest from the oil and gas industry.”
“Mr. Hassen took these and other significant actions without submitting public financial disclosures or going through the Senate confirmation process, depriving Congress and the public of the transparency and accountability that are fundamental to the integrity of federal decision-making,” they wrote.
Jimmy Tobias contributed to this report.
Fantastic reporting. Thank you!
Only yesterday 9/3 was the secretary order amended to designate someone other than Hassan as AS Policy Management Budget. New designee is Michael Boren