Ultimately, Inspector General Mark Greenblatt found that Zinke and the then chief had failed in their “duty of integrity” as federal employees.
Zinke and his chief of staff “made statements with the general intention of misleading OIG investigators” and “presented an inaccurate version of the circumstances in which the DOI made key decisions.” IG wrote in the report.
Zinke left his post in the Trump administration in late 2018 after multiple ethics investigations into his actions. Zinke is currently running for Montana’s only congressional seat.
The IG report also said Zinke asked that their findings be put on hold until after the 2022 midterm elections.
“In his comments, Secretary Zinke cited DOJ guidelines and argued that release of this report should be delayed until after the November 2022 elections in which he is seeking public office,” the report said. said.
The Department of the Interior IG referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2018, but the Department declined to prosecute in the summer of 2021.
Although Zinke ultimately neither granted nor denied permission, IG inspectors found that he had lied about conversations with lower-level Home Affairs officials and misrepresented conversations with Heller. I discovered that
“Also, Director Zinke concluded in interviews with OIG investigators that he knew the above statements were inaccurate or incomplete,” the report states.
A statement from Jinki’s attorney, Danny Onorato, denounced the general investigation of the inspector as “another political slander,” and Jinki told IG, “He has no jurisdiction to act on the petition. Therefore, it has not been affected by the casino issue.”
“On the eve of the election, IG released a misleading and inaccurate report suggesting that Secretary Zinke was lacking candor in an interview with an IG agent,” said Onorato. .”
Greenblatt’s office initially began investigating the casino trades of New England Native American tribes, but eventually shifted its focus to potential fraud on the part of Zinke.
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva said in a statement that the report was another entry into Zinke’s lengthy lie and cover-up as Trump’s secretary of the interior.
“The report calls this a ‘lack of candor’, but in plain language it’s a ‘lie’,” Grijalva said.
Source: www.cnn.com
