Today, while testifying in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Interior Sec. Deb Haaland was grilled by Sen. Josh Hawley over FGI docs which revealed that DOI leadership secretly met with the Wilderness Society about the Twin Metals critical minerals project while they were suing the DOI to stop the mining project. The emails FGI obtained show that they were aware of the possible illegality of having the meeting and that they would need to jump through numerous hurdles for it to take place. The meeting was kept off of then Dep. Sec. Beaurdeau's calendar and in January 2022, the Wilderness Society got what they wanted and DOI canceled the Twin Metals mining project. While being pressed on this matter by Hawley, Haaland refused to answer his basic questions about this secret meeting and why DOI leadership is secretly meeting with dark money groups.

Peter McGinnis, spokesman for FGI, issued the following statement: 

"It’s gratifying that Senator Hawley made use of records obtained by the Functional Government Initiative on one of DOI’s most harmful decisions on critical minerals in the country -- records that also drove the House Committee on Natural Resources to open an investigation. Unfortunately, the senator’s exchange with Secretary Haaland shows her determination to avoid accountability for what’s happened at Interior on her watch. We’re no closer to knowing for certain whether secret, inappropriate and possibly illegal meetings took place and how they influenced DOI’s final decision on the Twin Metals project. What we do know is that because of decisions like those, Americans must be more dependent on China for the critical minerals necessary for almost all of our technology and even the Biden administration’s so-called green transition."