Trump’s Assault on Public Lands Exposed: Billionaire Doug Burgum’s Revolving Door of Unqualified Cronies with Damning Financial Conflicts While Democrats Demand Transparency
Oil Executive-Turned-DOGE Operative Still Holds Energy Stocks While Fast-Tracking Mining Projects; Fellow Unqualified Greedy Billionaire and Wall Street Banker Cronies Installed
HELENA, MT – Democratic lawmakers demanded the release of financial documents from Tyler Hassen, a former oil industry executive turned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operative who has been given sweeping authority to gut the Interior Department while potentially maintaining investments in the very industries he’s supposed to regulate. Rep. Jared Huffman and Rep. Maxine Dexter, members of the House Natural Resources Committee, are demanding transparency about Hassen’s financial entanglements, including his apparent retention of stock in Albemarle Corporation even as the administration fast-tracked the company’s lithium mining project on federal lands in Nevada.
This pattern of corruption extends beyond Hassen to a broader scheme of installing unqualified Wall Street executives and political loyalists in positions that require deep expertise in conservation science and environmental protection. News broke that Trump’s billionaire Interior Secretary Doug Burgum installed a fellow greedy billionaire Michael Boren as his newly minted Policy, Management, and Budget Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. Lawbreaker Boren, who has been in a public war with land agencies for years, was believed to be in line for a National Forest Service gig but is now apparently replacing Hassen.
“The pattern of corruption occurring under billionaire Doug Burgum’s failed leadership is appalling. Americans won’t stand idly by as Burgum and his fellow cronies sell off and sell out our parks, public lands, and wildlife,” said Jayson O’Neill, Save Our Parks spokesperson.
Billionaire Secretary Doug Burgum also tried to secretly place Kevin Lilly, a wealthy Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley executive with no conservation experience, in charge of overseeing the nation’s most treasured natural resources and wildlife protection programs. Lilly was conducting official business and making critical decisions for weeks before receiving proper legal authorization, highlighting the administration’s and Burgum’s complete disregard for legal processes designed to protect the public interest.
The National Park Service has descended into complete chaos under Trump’s leadership as he systematically dismantles federal land management agencies, creating dangerous conditions that directly threaten public safety and access to cherished natural wonders. Meanwhile, Interior Department employees describe being “terrorized” by Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE operatives who are systematically firing thousands of dedicated civil servants who have spent their careers protecting America’s natural heritage. This represents nothing less than a coordinated assault on the federal agencies responsible for safeguarding our public lands for future generations.
The Trump administration is exploiting legal loopholes like the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to bypass Senate confirmation and meaningful public oversight, effectively installing unqualified cronies without the traditional vetting process that ensures competent leadership of our conservation agencies. This secretive approach allows Trump and Burgum to place individuals with obvious financial conflicts of interest in positions where they can directly benefit their former employers and investment portfolios at the expense of environmental protection and public access to our shared natural resources.
Read more below:
Public Domain: Democratic Lawmakers Demand Interior DOGE Leader’s Financial, Ethics Docs
Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday requested documents detailing the financial holdings of Tyler Hassen, the former oil industry executive charged with spearheading the Trump administration’s purge of civil servants across the Interior Department.
A letter sent by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, raises concerns that the DOGE operative may have retained investments in industries that Interior directly overseas.
“Given Mr. Hassen’s significant role in ‘reorganizing’ the Department, indiscriminately purging employees, and making critical funding decisions, information regarding his financial disclosure, ethics agreement, and any conflicts of interest are important for ensuring the actions he takes benefit the American people rather than his own financial interests and should be made public,” reads the letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, which Huffman’s office shared exclusively with Public Domain.
The lawmakers requested Burgum and his team turn over all of Hassen’s financial disclosures, any ethics waivers, recusals or divestments, as well as his calendars and daily schedules, no later that Sept. 16.
“Mr. Hassen’s financial entanglements are consistent with many others across the administration,” the Democratic lawmakers added. “We remain concerned that his actions at the Department may be influenced by the prospect of personal gain through the weakening of agencies tasked with regulating the fossil fuel and mining sectors to which he has significant financial connections.”
Documents that Public Domain recently obtained shed additional light on these "entanglements," and raise questions about whether or when Hassen divested of energy-related holdings that could appear to create a conflict of interest. Most notably, he appears to have held onto stock in Albemarle Corporation as the administration moved to fast-track the company’s lithium mining project in Nevada.
An early member of Elon Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency, Hassen was embedded at the Interior Department in late January, as Public Domain first reported. In March, Burgum signed a secretarial order elevating the former oil industry executive to the role of Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget at Interior, a position that gave him broad authority to reorganize and downsize the department.
It remains unclear if Hassen sold that stock or other energy investments in the months since. Neither he nor the Interior Department responded to Public Domain’s repeated requests for comment.
Kate Groetzinger, communications manager at the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group, called the lack of transparency surrounding Hassen’s financial holdings “alarming.”
"Interior department employees shouldn't hold a financial stake in the companies that mine and drill on public lands... but it looks like that's exactly what Tyler Hassen did,” she said in an email. “Elon Musk may be gone, but DOGE's reign of corruption will take years to root out. It takes a special disregard for American values to do all that while also firing thousands of civil servants who care for our parks and public lands."
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