TRUMP’S INTERIOR SECRETARY ZINKE MISUSED HIS JOB: U.S. INVESTIGATORS
BILLINGS, Mont. — Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a commercial development project that included a microbrewery in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement, federal investigators said last week.
The investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general found that Zinke continued work on the commercial project through a nonprofit foundation in the resort community of Whitefish even after he committed upon taking office to break ties with the foundation.
Zinke, who is now running for Congress, also gave incorrect and incomplete information to an Interior Department ethics official who confronted him over his involvement and ordered agency staff to help him with the project in a misuse of his position, according to the investigator’s report Wednesday.
The Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation was created by Zinke and others in 2007 to build a community sledding hill in Whitefish, a tourist town about 25 miles from Glacier National Park and near the MontanaCanada border. The BNSF Railway company donated several acres of land to the foundation in 2008 to establish the park.
After being named Interior secretary in 2017, Zinke agreed to stop providing the foundation with his services.
But after resigning as the foundation’s president and while he was employed as the Interior Secretary, Zinke engaged in “repeated, ongoing substantive negotiations” with developers about the use of foundation property for the commercial project known as 95 Karrow, investigators said.
Zinke’s campaign blasted the investigative report as “a political hit job” and said in a statement that the involvement of Zinke’s family with the foundation led to the restoration of railroad land into a park where children can sled.
“They are proud of the children’s sledding park that dozens of kids use every weekend and countless locals use for exercise every day,” the statement said. Zinke is far outpacing his rivals in fundraising ahead of the June 7 Republican primary for an open Montana congressional seat — the position he held before joining former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
The department’s inspector general’s office — led by a Trump nominee, Mark Greenblatt — referred the results of the Zinke investigation to prosecutors. Federal prosecutors working under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, declined to pursue criminal charges last summer, the report said.
Zinke and his wife, Lola, declined interview requests from federal investigators looking into the land deal.
But emails and text messages from others who were involved in the development project show Zinke continued to communicate with developers even after resigning from the foundation in March 2017, according to investigators. The messages were obtained through subpoenas to the developers, who were not named.