Ryan Zinke says he came to the Interior Department as a reasonable guy, but it became increasingly clear Washington was an unreasonable world.
By the time Zinke, a native Montanan, resigned his post as interior secretary at the end of 2018, he was facing at least six different investigations into allegations of ethical misconduct and other violations. Environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers said Zinke was in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, the force behind several decisions that would expand energy development on public lands.
Zinke, though, says he was unfairly targeted, part of a pattern of attacks on Trump administration officials from within the government, led by agency staff who are supposed to be impartial watchdogs.
“You have the investigative arms of our government that are not being referees. They’re wearing uniforms,” Zinke told the Washington Examiner in a wide-ranging interview. “That is troubling, and this has to be addressed.”
Zinke pointed to the situation unfolding with former national security adviser Michael Flynn as another example. He called the prospect that the Obama administration spied on Flynn “shameful and disgusting.”
In his own case, Zinke said he thinks the inspector general’s office “was in coordination with the opposition.”
“I had been targeted,” he said. “I think I got sued eight times in the first day, before I even knew where my desk was.”
During his tenure, Zinke came under scrutiny for several allegations, including that his wife traveled with him in government vehicles against agency policy and that he blocked Native American tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut under lobbying pressure from MGM Resorts. The Interior Department watchdog was also exploring a real estate deal that involved Zinke’s family and the chairman of oil services giant Halliburton in an inquiry that was referred to the Justice Department.
Zinke, though, said he took the allegations against him to attorneys in D.C., who told him there was “nothing there” and the investigations were “intended to harass” but that he would have to defend against them, Zinke recalled. And it would cost him to do so about $25,000 a month, he said.
“My wife and I were talking, and we said, ‘Look, we’re not going to sell our property to serve,’” said Zinke, speaking to the Washington Examiner from Santa Barbara, California. He balances his time between there and Montana. Two years “was as far as we could go and justify it financially,” he said.
Zinke acknowledged some of the investigations into his conduct still remain open.
“Unfortunately, they keep them open, just out of harassment,” he said.
But he also said it’s a bad sign when public officials would have to spend multiple thousands of dollars just to defend their position against what he characterizes as politically motivated attacks.
“For the future of our country, we need really good people to serve, and the resume shouldn’t start with a billionaire on the front of it,” Zinke said. “I have nothing against billionaires. I worked for one, love him to death. But it can’t be a prerequisite for serving in the highest levels of our government.”
Zinke, 58, is a former Navy SEAL who served as a state senator in Montana and then was elected to Congress in 2014.
Since he’s left Washington, he’s taken consulting jobs within the energy sector, including working with Cressman Tubular Products Corp. and Houston-based oil and gas explorer Oasis Petroleum Inc., according to news reports. Zinke also joined the board of the U.S. Gold Corp. in April 2019.
Zinke said the range of projects he consults on is diverse and includes renewable energy and work to address plastics in the ocean. He said he’s also catching up on “31 years of deferred maintenance” on his property and spending time with his family.
The Montanan said he’s always considered himself a conservationist, and he’s had a good rapport with environmentalists in the past.
But Zinke said there’s a difference between a conservationist and the “radical environmentalists” he said he found as his critics when he was interior secretary. Those environmentalists, he said, want to “bubble wrap” public lands so no one can use it, which Zinke described as impractical.
“They’re willing to burn the entire forest down rather than harvest a single tree,” he said.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to mine anything ever? Wouldn’t it be nice if energy, you know, I guess, grew on trees and you didn’t need any fertilizer?” Zinke quipped.
“The reality is it does take mining, and it’s how you mine, where you mine, and how you reclaim that mine at the end of its service life,” he added. “That’s the important discussion.”
Zinke said decisions he made were misunderstood and mischaracterized by environmentalists in a way that was “dishonest.” For example, he defended his decision recommending that President Trump shrink the size of several monuments, the most controversial of which was the Bear’s Ears monument in Utah created by President Barack Obama in 2016.
In December 2017, Trump, at Zinke’s recommendation, decreased the size of the monument by more than 1 million acres, an 85% reduction, creating instead two smaller monuments. Environmental groups slammed the move, saying it opens previously protected land to oil and gas development and uranium mining.
Zinke, though, said the decision wasn’t about energy development, but about the law. He said he took what he thought was a “very reasonable approach,” one that even gave some deference to the Obama administration. Utah’s governor, both senators, the state’s House delegation, and even the Navajo tribe that lived on the land all wanted the monument completely “rescinded,” Zinke said, a step he didn’t recommend.
Democratic governors similarly mischaracterized the Trump administration’s push to open federal waters to offshore drilling, he said.
Zinke said his recommendation to Trump was threefold: Any move to drill more offshore should be in a state that has oil and gas resources, has the infrastructure built out, and has support from state governments and local communities.
Thus, the opposition of states such as Florida, where the Republican governor and Republican senators have raised the alarm at attempts to expand drilling, would be factored into any decision, he added.
States such as Oregon and Washington, however, whose Democratic governors were outspoken critics of plans to expand drilling, didn’t even meet the criteria Zinke laid out, he said.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who made a name for himself as the “climate candidate” during his brief White House run, said in 2018 he wanted his state excluded from Trump’s offshore drilling plans. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order in 2018 barring offshore drilling in the state. She has also requested an exclusion from the Trump plans.
Those states were “jumping up and down for political points, but there’s no resources off the coast of Oregon and Washington,” Zinke said.
Zinke also said he thinks science shouldn’t be political.
He said as interior secretary, he read the entire National Climate Assessment released in 2018. It took him three days to read and absorb the more than 1,500-page report, a detailed assessment of the risks posed by climate change.
“I actually thought the content of the report itself was good,” Zinke said, though he added the report’s executive summary talked too much about the risks of climate change at a “global nuclear combat” level.
“The fact of the matter is, we don’t have a lot of data that would suggest that it’s a crisis,” he added. “The data would suggest we should always be concerned about pollution [and] plastics in the ocean.”
Zinke added he had long conversations with the head of the U.S. Geological Survey about the “tenor” of the discussion on climate science.
“It’s unfortunate that science is being used to justify a political agenda,” Zinke said, adding he “tried to refrain from such nonsense.”
“In Interior, we made decisions based on, I think, an American conservation ethic, which is best science, best practice, greatest good for the longest term,” he added.
