Zinke used Thanksgiving to sneak a Koch adviser and party loyalist into key public information role
The person in charge of FOIA requests to the Interior Department is, uh, unlikely to view them favorably.
ALAN PYKE
DEC 10, 2018, 7:37 PM
After attracting more scandals in 18 months than his four predecessors managed in 16 years, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke quietly shut the door to further public scrutiny of his office over the Thanksgiving break.
The secretary gave control of incoming Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to former Koch Industries adviser and longtime Zinke consigliere Dan Jorjani in an order dated November 20 but first uncovered Monday afternoon by the Center for Biological Diversity.
Zinke’s move on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving is best understood as a reshuffling of his resources, from attack to defense. Jorjani has worked for the agency since at least May 2017, serving as the chief lawyer putting Zinke and Trump’s agenda into black-letter policy action. He worked with energy industry interests to pen the rollbacks of Obama-era regulatory decisions protecting migratory birds and rejecting a mining proposal at the edge of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, according to reporting by Pacific Standard’s Jimmy Tobias.
As Zinke’s management of the department drew scandalous scrutiny — like so many other Trump cabinet secretaries, Zinke appears to play fast and loose with ethics rules governing travel costs — Jorjani wrote to a colleague that Interior staffers’ primary responsibility is to protect Zinke from negative press. He will now be the central gatekeeper of the agency’s documents when journalists, watchdogs, and other citizens seek insight into the conduct of their government.
https://thinkprogress.org/zinke-interior-koch-public-information-22c3baada9d6/
Hey, Zinke, since your a POS.......................do you know who your going to have to answer to come January 4, 2019 in the House Natural Resource Committee, here let me give you a clue......................Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.).......................
= new reply since forum marked as read
