A Senate panel votes to put a former Washington lobbyist in charge of the Interior Department despite intense debate among senators over his links to former clients.
A Senate panel voted Thursday to put a veteran former lobbyist in charge of the Interior Department, despite a last-minute round of intense debate on allegations that he was using his federal position to benefit former industry clients.
Documents that surfaced Thursday showing invoices and communications as recently as 2017 among Bernhardt and his old lobbying firm, and one of Bernhardt's main clients — a politically powerful California agricultural water district, Westlands — made the committee vote on his nomination the occasion for renewed debate on the allegations. The New York Times reported on the documents Thursday.
Bernhardt did no lobbying for Westlands after he gave up his registration as a lobbyist to join Interior, Vander Voort said. She said a Westlands invoice that showed Bernhardt providing "federal lobbying" for the water agency in 2017 was actually to cover Bernhardt's costs for meeting with Westlands officials, not lobbying, but was "inappropriately labeled by the billing department.
The Department of Interior's Office of the Inspector General said earlier this week it was reviewing documents provided by Bernhardt's opponents on his work with Westlands. But it has not yet said whether it would launch a formal investigation. Repeated claims now that Bernhardt is using his job to rush through permitting decisions for oil and gas companies and other breaks for former clients "make me feel very strongly we shouldn't go forward" with Bernhardt's nomination, he said.
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