Former President Donald Trump‘s interior secretary violated ethics rules during his tenure, an investigation by an independent agency watchdog concluded.
The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released Wednesday that former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who is now running for Congress again in Montana, improperly participated in private real estate negotiations during his time leading the federal agency and misled an ethics investigator.
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“A Biden administration-led report published false information and was shared with the press as a political hit job — real shocker,” Zinke’s congressional campaign said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The report is totally subjective and admitted they released it because their conclusions were too flimsy and biased for DOJ to even consider. They didn’t even bother to talk to Ryan Zinke, staff, or anyone else who was supposedly involved in the nonexistent ‘negotiations.'”
The 34-page report says Zinke communicated with developers working on the so-called 95 Karrow project interested in using land owned by the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation that his family helped create. The development project involved a hotel, microbrewery, restaurants, and more in Whitefish, Montana. The foundation donated land for a parking lot.
The report cites 64 emails and text messages between August 2017 and July 2018 and says Zinke “may have used” federal resources for personal financial gain. The report says Zinke continued to communicate with the developers for about a year into his tenure as interior secretary and misrepresented the situation to a designated agency ethics official, or DAEO. Zinke told the official he no longer represented the foundation while serving as secretary and had minimal participation in the project, the investigation found.
“We concluded that Secretary Zinke violated his ethics obligations as set forth in his ethics agreement, recusal memorandum, and accompanying documents by continuing to be involved in Foundation matters while he was Secretary of the Interior,” the report reads. “We also concluded that he violated his duty of candor when he knowingly provided materially incorrect, incomplete, and misleading answers to the DAEO when the DAEO questioned him in July 2018.”
Mark Greenblatt, who was appointed during the Trump administration, is currently serving as the Interior Department’s inspector general. The report says the investigators turned over their findings to the Justice Department, which declined to prosecute the case during the summer of 2021.
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Zinke announced his campaign for Montana’s 1st District last year. Zinke previously served in Congress for Montana’s at-large district from 2015-17. Montana gained a congressional seat following the latest census and now has two seats. Polling shows him as a front-runner in the Republican primary for the seat, which is scheduled for June 7. It is unclear how the ethics report may affect the race.
“Only in Biden’s corrupt admin is talking to one’s neighbor about the town’s public meetings and history of the land a sin,” Zinke’s campaign said to the Washington Examiner. “The Zinke family was able to create a free and open space for people to enjoy in Whitefish. They are proud of the children’s sledding park that dozens of kids use every weekend and countless locals use for exercise every day.”
