NEW: Watchdog Group Seeks Congressional Investigation Into One Of Burgum’s Top Interior Official’s Self-Dealing Corruption

Caught On Camera: Karen Budd-Falen Admits To Directing Federal Grazing Policy Benefiting Her Family’s Interests

HELENA, MT – Watchdog Campaign for Accountability is calling on Congress to formally investigate Karen Budd-Falen, the third-ranking official at Doug Burgum’s Interior Department. New reporting by the Washington Post, along with evidence compiled by the watchdog groups, reveals that Budd-Falen has spent much of the past year directing federal policy in ways that directly benefit her family's ranching operation — which holds grazing leases on over a quarter million acres of federal land. The reporting includes her own on-camera admission.

Budd-Falen and her husband own a sprawling ranching empire with federal public land grazing leases administered by the department and agencies she oversees. The most damning evidence comes from Budd-Falen herself. In an on camera interview with Wyoming Senator Lummis for the “Happy Trail with the Senate Western Caucus” series, Budd-Falen describes how she crafted categorical exclusions to expand grazing in northern Nevada, then named the specific beneficiary of that work: “places like Northern Nevada where my father-in-law’s place is.” Her father-in-law passed away in 2022, and that ranch is now managed by her husband. A senior federal official, in her own words, on camera, bragging that her official government work benefiting her own family’s land holdings is a textbook violation of 18 U.S.C. § 208, the federal conflict of interest statute.

“Something is rotting inside of Doug Burgum’s Department of the Interior, and the stench is coming from one of his top officials. The extent of the ongoing self-dealing and corruption at the expense of taxpayers, and our outdoors is unprecedented. Budd-Falen is clearly operating on her behalf, in violation of federal conflict of interest law. Americans deserve answers and accountability for the corruption happening under Secretary Burgum,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson.

According to the Post, Campaign for Accountability sent the letter to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs urging a formal investigation yesterday, arguing that Budd-Falen’s conduct violates both 18 U.S.C. § 208 and the specific ethics commitments she made during the first Trump administration. Rather than address the misconduct, the Interior Department quietly issued a new Section 208 waiver to expand Budd-Falen’s authority over the very policies she has already been exploiting.

Budd-Falen’s conflict of interest problem is not new. Prior reporting confirmed she held tens of thousands of dollars in Big Oil stocks while advancing industry interests at Interior. She is also at the center of ongoing questions and under investigation over an undisclosed $3.5 million deal tied to a lithium mine her agency approved during the first Trump administration. Burgum, who has close financial ties to major oil and gas interests and who has yet to answer for the culture of self-dealing festering inside his own department, continues to shield her.

Burgum will be testifying in front of House Natural Resources to answer questions about his disastrous FY 2027 proposed budget and this administration’s mismanagement of America’s beloved public lands and parks on Wednesday.

Read more below: 

Washington Post: Trump official says she’s involved in policy changes that benefit her family’s ranches, video shows

A top Trump appointee at the Interior Department acknowledged that she has been involved in changes to grazing policies that benefit ranching businesses like her family’s, according to a video of her remarks — a claim that some ethics experts say could violate federal law.

Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen told a Congressional Western Caucus event in December that grazing policy is part of her job, and “the thing that probably was the closest to my heart was grazing regulations,” according to a video that Senate Western Caucus Chairwoman Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) uploaded to her public YouTube page. The remarks, which have not previously been reported, prompted at least one nonpartisan watchdog group to call for an investigation into whether she violated ethics laws.

Budd-Falen and her husband own at least five cattle or ranch operations in Nevada and Wyoming, according to her federal financial disclosure forms, each valued at more than $1 million. The couple’s companies additionally hold allotments that allow them to graze cattle on about one-quarter-million acres of federal land overseen by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.

Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said it planned to send a letter Saturday to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee demanding that Congress investigate whether Budd-Falen violated ethics laws, and to look into whether the Interior Department’s ethics office failed to act as an independent check on her conflicts of interest.

“The situation with Karen Budd-Falen seems to be quite brazen in the scheme of conflicts of interest,” Kuppersmith said. “She is, by her own admission, working on policy for grazing that will likely directly impact her own financial interests. And they’re not even trying to hide it.”

Richard Painter, formerly the chief ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration, said that if Budd-Falen has received federal grazing rights from Interior, while also creating grazing policy at the department, “that would be a pretty slam-dunk financial conflict of interest.”

Painter said it was “wrong,” “unacceptable” and unusual for the government to issue a waiver like that, but that it would offer her protection going forward. It would not apply to her actions for the first year in office before it was issued, he added.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said Congress should open a review of the administration’s actions that may have benefited Budd-Falen.

“You don’t have to be an expert on land management to know that when she talks about how policy changes are going to benefit ‘private landowners,’ she’s talking about herself,” Blumenthal said in a statement to The Post.

The Campaign for Accountability’s complaint marks the second set of ethics questions raised regarding Budd-Falen this year. In January, House Democrats demanded that Interior’s inspector general investigate her role in the 2018 approval of a lithium mine when she served as Interior deputy solicitor. A year before the decision, her husband had signed a deal to sell water from a family ranch to the mining company behind the project.

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