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With Bernhardt Confirmed at Interior, Oil Execs Must Be Laughing So Hard It Hurts

April 11, 2019

With Bernhardt Confirmed at Interior, Oil Execs Must Be Laughing So Hard It Hurts

Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen

Note: The U.S. Senate today confirmed David Bernhardt to run the U.S. Department of the Interior. Public Citizen waged a campaign to highlight Bernhardt’s many conflicts of interest and urge against his confirmation. Public Citizen earlier this year filed an ethics complaint against Bernhardt, who has been acting Interior Department secretary since January.

With the confirmation of former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt as secretary of the interior, Big Oil execs must be laughing so hard it hurts. They already had literally laughed out loud about the influence that people like Bernhardt, when he was deputy secretary, gave them in the Trump administration.

We know with absolute certainty that Bernhardt will be a horrible secretary, because he had been a catastrophic deputy secretary – eager to do the bidding of his former clients, without regard to the impact on the public lands, endangered species or public health.