Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “could have avoided” taking a $12,375 charter flight to his home state of Montana after he spoke in June to a professional hockey team in Las Vegas owned by a former campaign contributor, according to the agency’s inspector general.
The Interior Department’s inspector general on Monday released the findings of an investigation it started in October in which it faulted Zinke for spending $12,375 on a chartered flight after speaking at the developmental camp for the Golden Knights, a National Hockey League team in Las Vegas.
The inspector general’s office reviewed three chartered flights Zinke took in fiscal 2017, and concluded that the Interior Department “generally followed relevant law, policy, rules, and regulations” in scheduling and approving the travel.
However, Zinke’s use of the chartered flight after the speech to the hockey team “could have been avoided if the [Interior Department] employees who were scheduling Zinke’s trip had worked with the Golden Knights to better accommodate his schedule,” the report said.
Interior Department ethics officials approved the trip, but did so with incomplete information, the inspector general said.
For example, Interior Department staff failed to tell ethics officials before approving the trip that Zinke’s speech would not cover anything related to his government role. The agency also did not disclose to ethics officials that Bill Foley, chairman of Fidelity National Financial Inc. and a donor to Zinke’s congressional campaigns, owns the hockey team.
Both facts likely would have made taking a chartered flight inappropriate, the report said.
“If ethics officials had known Zinke’s speech would have no nexus to the [Interior Department], they likely would not have approved this as an official event, thus eliminating the need for a chartered flight,” the report said. “Moreover, had ethics officials been made aware that the Golden Knights’ owner had been a donor to Zinke’s congressional campaign, it might have prompted further review and discussion.”
Interior scheduling staff alerted Melinda Loftin, then the agency’s designated ethics official, of the trip in June.
Loftin told the inspector general’s office that she had not known that the hockey team’s owner had donated to Zinke’s congressional campaign until reading about it in a newspaper article. However, Loftin added that this “fact alone probably would not have changed her opinion” about whether Zinke could speak at the event in his official capacity.
She also said she did not know the cost of the chartered flight until seeing it reported in the media.
After reviewing a video of Zinke’s speech to the Golden Knights, Loftin acknowledged the speech was not what she expected because he never mentioned the Interior Department or his job.
Instead, Zinke delivered an “inspirational-type speech” to the hockey players, who were between the ages of 18 to 23, about his service as a Navy SEAL, Loftin said.
“It certainly should have been tied to the Department of the Interior and in some way reflective of our mission” for it to qualify as an official event where a chartered flight could be deemed appropriate, Loftin said.
The inspector general’s office interviewed Zinke for its report.
ZInke described the speech to hockey players as “motivational because I have a background as a SEAL.”
When asked why he did not mention the Interior Department in his speech, Zinke said the idea of “leadership” is a core Interior Department value and that he had not been told the speech needed to reference the agency to be considered official business.
The inspector general’s office also reviewed Zinke’s trips on military aircraft during fiscal 2017, which cost Interior a total of $185,203. The internal watchdog deemed the flights appropriate.
Zinke last week criticized attacks over his spending on items such as travel as “false, misleading, and blatantly untruthful.”
He denied going outside agency protocol when taking making decisions related to travel and spending.
“Every time I travel it is approved by legal folks and career ethics [officials],” Zinke said in testimony to the House Appropriations Committee. “I understand we live in a political environment, but in every situation I follow procedures.”
Zinke is one of many Trump administration officials whose travel and spending habits have been or are the subject of investigations, including Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
