Distaste for Ethical Norms, Support for Private Interests Cloud Trump’s Bureau of Land Management Nominee
Public Citizen letter details long list of potential ethical conflicts, calls on lawmakers to reject Steve Pierce’s nomination
WASHINGTON — With longstanding ties to the New Mexico oil industry, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is beset with conflicts of interest that should disqualify him for the role, according to a letter sent to Senators serving on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The letter details plans by Steve Pearce, a Republican former member of Congress from New Mexico, who plans to transfer the oilfield service firm Trinity Industries as well as other holdings to the control of his wife, Cynthia Pearce. The company would be free to rent oilfield equipment to companies drilling on the very federal land that Pearce is poised to oversee in his role at BLM.
“Over the course of his political career, Steve Pearce has made it clear that his allegiance is to the fossil fuel industry, and not to any sort of ethical standard meant to protect the public,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Pearce’s business entanglements and apparent distaste for ethical norms and desire to sell off public lands raise real questions about whether his recusals and ethics agreement are sufficient. In an administration plagued by appointees who give little thought or regard to insider dealing, corruption, and using public office to advance personal enrichment and corporate interests, Pearce, unfortunately, would fit right in.”
Pearce has a decades-long record of advocating for the sale or stripping of protections from America’s public land and advocating for private interests. While a Representative from New Mexico, Pearce pushed to eliminate methane restrictions for oil and gas drillers, sought to block the federal government from increasing oil and gas royalty rates that had not been revised since the 1920s and pushed to sell off public lands and eliminate national monuments.
“America’s public lands must not be for sale, and the Senate should not confirm a conflicted nominee who has spent his career arguing otherwise,” Weissman said.
Pearce is Trump’s second nominee to lead the agency, which oversees 245 million acres of federal lands. The first, Kathleen Sgamma, withdrew her name last year after it emerged that she had criticized Trump’s incitement of the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol Hill attack. By contrast, Pearce has proven to be an unabashed MAGA loyalist, even working to nominate a slate of fake electors to attempt to vote for Trump in New Mexico in 2020—despite Joe Biden’s 11-point victory in that state.
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