Documents released as the result of litigation over a Freedom of Information Act request show a former Department of the Interior nominee sought an ethics waiver to work with former clients involved in litigation against the Department.
Elizabeth Klein was nominated to be Deputy Secretary at the DOI, but her nomination was withdrawn and she was appointed to be the senior counselor to Secretary Deb Haaland. Energy Policy Advocates (EPA) obtained documents via litigation over FOIA requests it had filed. These documents reveal Klein sought to obtain a waiver allowing her to deal with issues before the Department involving former clients.
The waiver is called a 502 authorization, referencing the section of the law prohibiting political appointees from participating in a particular matter involving specific parties with whom the person has a "covered relationship," a category that includes former clients.
The advocate group filed FOIA requests regarding Klein's ethics documents, but the watchdog group said it had to sue the Department to obtain the documents.
Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect Public Trust, a government watchdog, said, “The Biden Administration is touting itself as the most ethical in history, but the Department of the Interior certainly doesn’t appear to have gotten that message. From the beginning of this administration they’ve been acting as if they have something to hide and, with the documents EPA was able to obtain after filing suit, it appears they probably do. This sparks the question of what else is going on that the public should be concerned about?”
Klein worked for the Bloomberg-funded State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, which provided "fellows" to state attorney general's offices. The fellows assisted the states with lawsuits challenging actions of the DOI and other federal agencies during the Trump administration. Eleven states participated in the fellows program.
But Klein's communications with ethics officials, as revealed in the documents EPA received, indicate discussions on only five of those states as former clients. At one point, it appears her ethics guidance only recused her from two states. Communications between Klein and ethics officials also indicate she sought an unusual waiver, containing "non-standard language" that would have allowed her to deal with issues before the Department involving those former clients.
“As glad as we are breaking through the stonewall that Interior erected when faced with requests for public records, the documents released, and Interior’s withholding of attachments to the emails, appear to raise more questions rather than providing any answers," said Robert Schilling, the EPA executive director. "Was Interior looking out for the public, or creating backdoor workarounds for high-level officials faced with ethical issues?”
