Trump Appointee Warned About Destruction of Records and Ongoing Investigations
WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – Members of the House Committee on Natural Resources publicly warned a Trump Administration appointee that attempts to destroy records and avoid oversight could violate federal law as multiple ongoing inquiries await investigation.
"Your nomination arrives at a time when the OIG [Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of the Interior] has been asked to investigate multiple credible and well-evidenced allegations of corruption," wrote Democratic leaders of the House Natural Resources Committee in a letter to Dennis Kirk, the nominee to lead the federal watchdog's office. "[Y]our heavily partisan record and lack of relevant experience raise questions about the potential impact of your tenure on the otherwise nonpartisan watchdog inside the Department of the Interior (DOI). Reports that officials at DOI have engaged in a pattern of records destruction increase the urgency of this matter."
In the wake of the resignation of President Nixon, Congress passed multiple oversight laws intended to limit the potential for future unlawful acts by members of the executive branch including the Inspector General Act of 1978 which established nonpartisan offices within federal agencies to provide independant oversight and objective investigations.
Of the over 70 inspector general positions that exist today, most are appointed by the President and require confirmation by the Senate.
In the first month of his second term, President Trump fired inspector generals at multiple federal agencies and many of those positions remain vacant to this day.
"Inspectors General are watchdogs placed inside agencies to identify and prevent waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement," explained Tuesday's letter. "Their effectiveness as a guardrail of democracy depends heavily on their independence. An Inspector General whose loyalty to the President takes precedence over the mission of the offices of the inspectors general poses a threat to that independence.
Your News Channel covered the announcement late last year that the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General agreed to investigation billions in federal energy investments selectively terminated by the Trump Administration.
While the Department of Energy's independant watchdog has responded to public calls for an investigation, the Department of the Interior has not.
Instead, members of Congress have opened formal inquiries into actions by the Interior Department, alleging that some of the recent deals to terminate offshore wind energy projects are unconstitutional and have likely broken federal law.
According to Ranking Member Huffman of the House Natural Resources Committee and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Raskin, the Trump Administration issued two payments adding up to almost $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies from the Department of the Treasury's Judgement Fund, an account created by Congress in 1956 to pay court-ordered judgements and settlements against the government.
"When Secretary [of the Interior] Burgum signed the settlement agreements in March 2026, the agreements' own recitals framed it a settlement agreement. After coming under fire, he abandoned that characterization entirely," noted a letter issued to TotalEnergies' CEO by Congressmembers Huffman and Raskin in July. "He [Secretary Burgum] now publicly describes the settlement agreement as a refund. Neither characterization is legally sufficient to gift TotalEnergies with nearly $1 billion taxpayer dollars. Nor can Secretary Burgum cure one defect by retreating to another."
Your News Channel also reached out to the Interior Department independently about the wording in the deal struck with TotalEnergies and other companies to not pursue energy generating projects.
The Department of the Interior's statement to Your News Channel in April of this year referred to the payments as "monies refunded" and "not taxpayer dollars" and that the "settlement" was "approved by the Department of Justice".
The difference between categorizing the payments as a refund for a lease terminated by the federal government or a subsidized investment is a serious legal question in two key ways.
The Ranking Members argued that using the Judgement Fund, which is managed by the Treasury Department and funded by Congress, to settle, reimburse, or to subsidize a future investment would violate the above appropriations clause as it was not approved by Congress.
"The constitutional stakes are greater than a single improper payment," stated April's letter from Congressional leaders. "The Judgment Fund has no annual cap, and individual disbursements receive no congressional review. Congress designed it that way because court judgments are involuntary; if a judge orders the government to pay, then it must pay. However, that logic does not extend to voluntary deals the executive branch chose to enter, on terms it negotiated, with counterparties it selected. Applied to those transactions, the Judgment Fund becomes the ultimate political slush fund."
Additionally, the Ranking Members noted that under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, when the federal government cancels an offshore energy lease, the lessee is "entitled to receive the lesser of two amounts: the fair value of the cancelled rights as of the date of cancellation, or the excess of the lessee's total expenditures on the lease over revenues received."
"Under that formula [in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act], TotalEnergies was entitled to whatever the current fair value of OCS-A 0545 and OCS-A 0538 actually was on March 23, 2026, not a full refund of the purchase price," noted the Ranking Members earlier this year. "The administration did not use the statutory formula, as incorporated into the leases. It paid nearly $1 billion—a figure bearing no relationship to what Congress wrote into law, and almost certainly a significant overpayment even under the most favorable reading of the statute."
The Department of Treasury's Judgement Fund website states, "An agency may only ask for payment from the Judgment Fund if funds are not legally available to pay from the agency's own appropriations. If another source of funds exists to pay the award, the Judgment Fund cannot be used even if the other source does not have enough money. In that case, the agency with the other source of funds must ask Congress to appropriate more money for that other source."
Claims made by multiple federal agencies regarding the offshore wind energy deals are now subject to multiple Freedom of Information Act requests filed by Your News Channel author including one with the U.S. Department of the Treasury that has already exceeded the statutory limits for a response.
According to the Department of the Treasury, it has no record of authorization from any other federal agency, including from the Department of the Interior that it could not make the payments for any amount nor from the Attorney General or a designee for administrative payments in excess of $25,000.
Both forms of authorization are required under federal law.
California's Attorney General Rob Bonta has also indicated his office's intent to sue the Trump Administration over other deals made by the Department of the Interior with offshore wind energy companies locally.
Despite the potential violations of the U.S. Constitution as well as federal law regarding offshore wind energy deals to limit energy generation nationally, the Trump Adminsitration has penned additional deals with offshore wind energy companies since then.
"Offshore wind still relies heavily on foreign supply chains and expensive backup systems," argued the Department of the Interior in its statement to Your News Channel in April of this year. "Americans deserve energy infrastructure that strengthens our national security and shields taxpayers from global volatility."
"The settlement [with TotalEnergies] also ensured the national security concerns related to the operation of offshore turbines identified by the War Department [U.S. Department of Defense] would not be realized due to this matter being settled," added the Department of the Interior in response to Your News Channel in April.
Despite the stated emphasis on national safety and energy generation, in December of last year, the Trump Administration suspended five large-scale offshore wind projects, including one project that was already generating electricity, "due to national security risks" detailed in still-classified reports the Interior Department shared in a press release.
Traditionally, federal agencies do certify wind projects of a certain height, but federal courts have struck down each of those stop work orders despite the use of national security as a reason for terminating the projects.
"The assertion that the offshore wind projects would impair national security appears to have been
a fabricated justification for canceling the leases," detailed Ranking Members Raksin and Huffman. "If DOI had committed to the essential terms of this deal before it was briefed on the national security assessment it now cites publicly, that assessment is legally pretextual, the cancellation cannot survive legal scrutiny for being arbitrary and capricious, and Congress and the American people were lied to about why their government paid nearly $1 billion to a foreign energy company."
At the same time, the Trump Administration argued that an energy emergency it declared last year required it to use a Cold War-era defense law to forcibly restart oil production at the Santa Ynez Unit locally due to national security concerns over the warnings of state safety regulators and to the explicit benefit of donors, connections that are now subject to Congressional investigation.
The same Administration is also responsible for cutting billions in Congressionally-approved energy investments, potentially outside of its legal authority, rescinding over 3.5 million acres of offshore waters already leased for energy generation, and adding $40 billion in subsidies exclusively for the oil and natural gas industry through the One Big Beautiful Bill.
"I've got to tell you, it's pretty damn frustrating when I hear and read about this Administration’s approach to offshore wind, particularly off the coast of California," stated California Senator Alex Padilla to Secretary of the Interior Burgum directly during a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "It makes no sense for an Administration that wants to be energy dominant — as electricity prices are skyrocketing and demand growth is increasing — to pay developers to stop building energy projects that can add more electrons to the grid. Now, off the coast of California, it's not just offshore wind opportunities. You're seeking to now promote offshore drilling off the coast of California and elsewhere."
Tuesday's letter also addressed concerns about Kirk's adherence to federal preservation laws.
"You appear to have served in a partisan role when appointed as a Senior Advisor at the IC IG [Intelligence Community Inspector General]," noted the Congressmembers. "That placement coincided with the IC IG's high-profile investigation into Signalgate, the dangerous, negligent leak of classified military plans to attack the Houthis — a scandal that resulted from an apparent attempt to violate records-preservation laws."
Attempts by the Trump Administration to unilaterally declare the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a law passed after the resignation of President Nixon that requires the executive branch to preserve records, unconstitutional is already subject to a federal lawsuit.
The right for administration's to request that information not be retained for posterity, known as executive privilege, is the topic of the first memorandum issued this week by recently-confirmed Attorney General Blanche, his first public act after his confirmation.
Federal document preservation laws have already been upheld by both U.S. District Courts as well as the Supreme Court, to which the Trump Administration declared was unacceptable in court documents.
"OLC [the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel] quickly made clear, however, the real reason it did not treat Nixon v. GSA [former President Nixon's challenge to the Presidentail Records Act of 1978] as controlling: OLC simply believes the Supreme Court's decision was 'wrong'," noted the lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's memorandum declaring federal preservation laws illegal earlier this year. "OLC described the case as 'wrong' (twice) and 'mistaken,' and asserted that the Supreme Court 'fail[ed] to appreciate the Article II consequences of permitting Congress to regulate presidential records.' OLC relied almost exclusively on its own prior opinions to explain why it was right and the Supreme Court was wrong; over the span of four single-spaced pages of analysis, OLC did not cite a single judicial precedent to support its analysis or conclusions."
Plaintiff's in that case then argued that before any administration can unilaterally alter federal law, it must also comply with procedures detailed in the Administrative Procedures Act and that the Executive Branch does not retain the authority to "say what the law is" citing the Supreme Court's decision in Marbury v. Madison.
Notably, in 2014, Congress expanded the Presidential Records Act to include electronic records and required federal officials to use official government email accounts when sending or forwarding any presidential records electronically.
"[R]eports suggest DOI officials may be engaging in preemptive cover-ups," noted Tuesday's letter. "Just this month, the public has learned that 'According to three staffers who witnessed it, officials [at DOI] have routinely shredded official documents and use disappearing Signal messages — even for mundane scheduling matters — to avoid communications being preserved, as is required by the Federal Records Act."
Tuesday's letter noted that the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General is expected to look into at multiple investigations into Trump Administration officials for potential unlawful acts as well as other high-profile investigations.
"Dr. Jenifer Chatfield, a DOI appointee overseeing Fish and Wildlife Service, faces evidence of family
favoritism, ethics violations, and lying to federal officials about her ethics disclosures. Karen Budd Falen, the third-highest ranking person at Interior, faces allegations that her family received a $3.5 million windfall tied to a lithium mine her own office helped approve. Matt Giacona, the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at DOI, faces a potential investigation into whether he violated federal ethics rules working on issues that could benefit his prior employer, a powerful oil and gas lobbying group. Just last week, a number of U.S. senators requested an investigation into what DOI officials knew – and when they knew it – about engineering failures at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and whether DOI employees withheld evidence from federal prosecutors."
Members asked that Kirk share how his office would ensure compliance with federal preservation laws by Sep. 1 of this year.
"You are expected to maintain full compliance with the FRA [Federal Records Act]," warned Tuesday's letter. "Any direction to direct, request, or suggest to others at the OIG that they destroy records or allow records to be destroyed or illegally altered will be considered a violation of the FRA."
Your News Channel reached out to the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General for more informaiton and its response will be added to this article when it is received.
