Zinke and his chief of staff “made statements to OIG investigators with the general intent to mislead them” and “presented an inaccurate version of the circumstances under which DOI made key decisions,” the IG wrote in a report.
Zinke left his post in the Trump administration in late 2018, following multiple ethics investigations into his conduct. Zinke is currently running for Montana’s lone House seat.
The IG report also said Zinke asked them to hold their findings until after the 2022 midterm elections.
“In his comments, Secretary Zinke cited DOJ guidance and argued that we should delay the release of this report until after the November 2022 elections in which he is seeking public office,” the report said.
The Interior IG referred the matter to the US Department of Justice in 2018, but the Department of Justice declined to prosecute in the summer of 2021.
The report found that as two New England tribes — the Mashantucket Pequot and the Mohegan — sought federal permits for a Connecticut casino, Zinke and his chief of staff met with lobbyists for a larger Nevada-based casino and a Nevada Senator (later identified as former Senator Dean Heller), who were pressuring them not to grant licenses.
While Zinke ultimately did not grant or deny the clearances, IG inspectors found that he lied to them about conversations he had with junior Interior officials, as well as misrepresenting his conversations with Heller.
“We also concluded that Secretary Zinke knew the statements described above were inaccurate or incomplete when he made them in his interviews with OIG investigators,” the report states.
A statement from Zinke’s attorney, Danny Onorato, blasted the inspector general’s investigation as “another political smear” and said Zinke told the IG he was not subject to influence on the casino matter because he “had no authority to act on the application . ”
“On the eve of the election, the IG released a misleading and inaccurate report suggesting that Secretary Zinke lacked candor in his interview with IG agents,” Onorato said. “This is wrong.”
While Greenblatt’s office initially began looking into the Native American tribes’ casino deal in New England, they eventually turned their focus to possible wrongdoing by Zinke.
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva said in a statement that the report “is another entry in former Secretary Zinke’s long litany of lies and cover-ups” as Trump’s interior secretary.
“The report calls this ‘dishonesty,’ but the simple word for that is ‘lies,’” Grijalva said.
