Zinke's Gone, But the Interior Won't Change
A little over a year after Outside published my profile of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, he’s finally on his way out.
Like many reporters who’ve followed Ryan Zinke’s tumultuous tenure at Interior, I’m surprised he was able to hang in there for so long. Zinke seemed impervious to the kind of flak that brought down his colleague Scott Pruitt, the departed Environmental Protections Agency secretary who shilled for oil and gas companies in his previous role as Oklahoma attorney general, along with former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
According to the Washington Post, Zinke’s scandals became too much for the Administration, which forced Zinke to resign by the end of the year or be fired. His resignation comes amid an avalanche of investigations into his official conduct—one of which, involving his shady real estate dealings with the chairman of Halliburton, was formally referred to the Justice Department in October.
Zinke’s office has been scandal-plagued from the outset, drawing scrutiny from nonprofit watchdogs, whistleblowers, and Interior’s inspector general for missteps big and small—from ordering a $139,000 set of doors for his office to shuttling his wife Lola around in government vehicles to paying $12,000 for a charter flight from a speaking engagement in Las Vegas to his hometown of Whitefish to commandeering a National Park Service helicopter to deliver him to a horseback date with Mike Pence to threatening Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski over her vote against advancing the House’s Obamacare repeal-and-replace legislation.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2376416/ryan-zinke-resigns-department-interior?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dispatch-12182018&utm_content=Dispatch-12182018+Version+A+CID_50227a0e265c5eddaaa7381be7cbb6c8&utm_source=campaignmonitor%20outsidemagazine&utm_term=Zinkes%20Gone%20But%20the%20Interior%20Wont%20Change