Sen. Josh Hawley believes President Joe Biden’s “green” policies may be fueled by dark money — and the Missouri Republican took one official task over it.
Hawley engaged in a contentious exchange with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Thursday over alleged meetings with “foreign dark-money groups that actively fund left-wing environmental initiatives,” the senator said in a news release.
He questioned Haaland during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing about an off-the-books meeting between her office and representatives of the Wilderness Society, which Hawley called a “left-wing environmentalist pressure group.”
Initially, Haaland said she couldn’t recall anyone in her agency meeting with the group, but the senator brought receipts.
“The answer is yes, your leadership has met with the Wilderness Society,” Hawley told her.
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“They met with the Wilderness Society when that group was a plaintiff suing the Department of the Interior with an adverse lawsuit against you, and they met with them off the books. I’ve got the emails,” he said.
“In July 2021, after you had come to office, members of the Wilderness Society, while they’re suing the department, write to your top deputy and ask for a meeting, and keep it off of his calendar,” the senator said.
He went on to read from a July 14, 2021, email from then-Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau in which Beaudreau asked, “Can we set up a meeting with these folks?”
Hawley noted that just days later, “they propose how they might calibrate this so it doesn’t look like they’re violating any of the rules of the court, and, remarkably, it stays completely off of everybody’s calendars.”
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“We only know about it because FOIA requests were filed,” the senator said, referring to emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act by Politico’s E&E News.
What Hawley said happens next may point to a backroom deal with the organization owned by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, “who has routed his money through all manner of dark money groups, including the Arabella [Advisors],” a known dark money network.
“And then after they have these off-the-books meetings, their request is to cancel the mineral leasing rights in Minnesota in the Superior National Forest,” the senator said. “This is a critical minerals mine. The society wants the mine shut down.
“After they meet off the books with your leadership, you do it. A few months later, you do it. You cancel the leases, and then you withdraw 225,000 acres of critical mining from production and leasing shortly after that.”
Hawley pressed Haaland about whether it was “common practice at your department to meet with dark money groups off the books and conceal it from the public,” which she couldn’t answer except to repeat that it involved a former official — Beaudreau resigned in October — who was “appointed by the president.”
“He’s your deputy secretary,” Hawley said.
“Are you the secretary of the Department of the Interior? I thought that’s why you were here. Are you the secretary? Don’t look at her, look at me,” he continued.
Eventually, the senator cornered Haaland into admitting that what goes on in her department is her “responsibility,” but she still denied having knowledge of the meeting in question.
“We have a corruption problem in this government, Madam Secretary, and frankly, we have a corruption problem in your department,” Hawley told her.
“We have foreign billionaires who are funding dark money groups coming to meet with your leadership, concealing it from the public, while they are filing lawsuits adverse to the department — doing it without the court’s knowledge, doing it — you say — without your knowledge, and then getting exactly what they want,” he said.
Hawley ended his remarks by chiding Haaland for poor leadership.
“It sounds to me like it’s the dark money billionaires who are calling the shots at the Department of the Interior. And all I have to say to you, Madame Secretary, is that is a travesty,” Hawley said.
“The American people should be in charge, not the foreign billionaires — and the fact that you’ve let them run rampant is outrageous,” he said.
Hawley was determined to hold Haaland’s feet to the fire, and it was about time.
The Biden administration is corrupt, but very few in the media or in government will hold it accountable — even in an election year when Republicans could take back the White House.
What Hawley did is what all GOP lawmakers should do when armed with the kind of evidence he had — and this is the second time this week that Haaland’s loyalties were credibly questioned.
On Tuesday, the House Natural Resources Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations held a hearing titled “Examining the Influence of Extreme Environmental Activist Groups in the Department of the Interior” that addressed another conflict for Haaland.
According to a June letter from the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, and other Republican lawmakers, Haaland’s department “cultivated intimate and potentially improper relationships with extreme environmental activist groups driving the Biden administration’s agenda.”
Moreover, Westerman noted that Somah Haaland, the secretary’s adult daughter, had ties to the Pueblo Action Alliance, which successfully lobbied for a 20-year moratorium on drilling leases near New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
It seems Deb Haaland is another D.C. swamp dweller. Thankfully, some lawyers are unafraid to wade into the muck to try to flush her out.
