Doug Burgum’s Interior Department Third-in-Command Made Millions Off Trump Administration Fast-Tracked Lithium Mine
New Revelations About Karen Budd-Falen Come on the Heels of Financial Disclosure Confirming Her Sizable Big Oil Investments, Federal Grazing Leases, and Failed Financial and Ethical Disclosures by Other Conflicted Cronies
HELENA, MT – This past weekend, just days after Interior Department Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen’s financial disclosure confirmed she still holds sizable investments in oil companies she regulates, new reporting shows the self-dealing goes beyond conflicts of interest into outright corruption. Budd-Falen, who also served in senior leadership during the first Trump administration, is the third-highest-ranking official under billionaire Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. During her previous time at Interior, she met with top executives from Lithium Americas, after which the Trump administration fast-tracked what became the nation’s largest lithium mine. At the same time, Budd-Falen sold water rights critical to making the project viable, making millions from the deal.
“This raises substantial questions about the lack of transparency, clear conflict-of-interests, and potential illegal self-dealing at the Interior Department under Doug Burgum. It wasn’t enough for Burgum’s top lieutenant, Karen Budd-Falen, to hold tens of thousands of dollars in Big Oil stocks while advancing their interests at Interior. Now we find out that she worked behind the scenes with Lithium Americas’ representatives and lobbyists, which received fast-track approval, making her and her husband millions,” said Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill. “This naked corruption and self-dealing is par for the course at Doug Burgum’s Interior Department, which is more focused on self-serving and special interests than the American people and our outdoor heritage. Congress must say enough is enough and immediately open an investigation into just how deep the rot at Burgum’s Interior goes.”
Save Our Parks has raised several questions about Burgum’s own conflicts of interest, unethical and potentially illegal activity, and other conflicted cronies nominated or hired, many of whom have yet to provide financial or ethics disclosures.
Read more below:
New York Times: The Trump Administration Approved a Big Lithium Mine. A Top Official’s Husband Profited.
A high-ranking official in the Interior Department is drawing scrutiny from ethics experts because she failed to disclose her family’s financial interest in the nation’s largest lithium mine that had been approved by her agency, according to state and federal records.
In 2018 Frank Falen sold water from a family ranch in northern Nevada to Lithium Nevada Corp., a subsidiary of Lithium Americas, for $3.5 million. The company was planning a $2.2 billion lithium mine nearby called Thacker Pass, and lithium mining requires significant amounts of water.
The mine needed a permit from the Interior Department, where Mr. Falen’s wife, Karen Budd-Falen, worked as the deputy solicitor responsible for wildlife from 2018 until 2021. She returned to the agency last year and is now the associate deputy secretary, the third highest-ranking position.
Mr. Falen’s sale of his water rights also depended on the mine getting a permit from the Interior Department. Without it, Lithium Nevada Corp. could have terminated its deal with him.
In November 2019, about two years before the agency approved the mine, Ms. Budd-Falen met with Lithium Americas executives over lunch in the cafeteria at the Interior Department.
Just before President Trump’s first term ended, the Interior Department approved Thacker Pass, using a “fast track” process to bypass typically lengthy environmental reviews.
Ethics experts said the financial relationship between Mr. Falen and the Thacker Pass developer raises questions about whether Ms. Budd-Falen acted improperly when she met with company executives, and why a $3.5 million water deal wasn’t publicly disclosed.
Under federal ethics laws, senior government officials must file public financial disclosure reports that detail their family’s income, assets, and liabilities to prevent conflicts of interest.
On four successive financial disclosure forms submitted to the government between 2018 and 2021, Ms. Budd-Falen listed her husband’s ranch, named Home Ranch, as an asset, noting that he had a 50 percent ownership share. The disclosures didn’t mention her husband’s sale of the water rights to Lithium Nevada Corp.
Each document filed annually also listed income from the ranch as less than $201. At the time, it was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in initial payments from Lithium Nevada Corp., according to the contract.
Lithium Nevada retained “the sole right, at its discretion, to terminate” the agreement. If the Interior Department had denied the company a permit, Lithium Nevada could have terminated the water contract, making just the initial payments but not the final lump sum. The contract was signed by Mr. Falen as a manager of Home Ranch LLC.
Federal employees are required to disclose spousal income and property, ethics experts said. They also said the agency should tell the public if Ms. Budd-Falen recused herself from Thacker Pass decisions or sought an ethics waiver in order to work on it.
In her position as deputy solicitor for wildlife, Ms. Budd-Falen was responsible for providing the agency with legal counsel over a range of issues including endangered species. Opponents of the Thacker Pass project said the mine threatened the Lahontan cutthroat trout, bighorn sheep, and pygmy rabbits as well as sage grouse habitat.
She also helped lead efforts within the Interior Department to revise the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA, a 1970 law that requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of major projects before they are built.
That process can take years, but the Trump administration in 2020 limited reviews to speed up permitting of road, pipelines and mining operations. The review for Thacker Pass was completed in under one year under the fast-tracked system.
To speak with Save Our Parks spokesperson Jayson O’Neill, email jayson@focalpointstrategygroup.com.
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