Ken Salazar, the Obama administration’s first-term interior secretary, took a task at an industry law and lobbying firm just months after leaving workplace. There, he refashioned himself as an oil champion and avoided disclosing the companies that paid him to lobby.
Now Salazar has a new role: adviser to Democratic governmental prospect Joe Biden
In June, after Biden clinched the Democratic presidential election, the project included Salazar, 65, to its list of prospective shift group employees. And earlier this month, the previous vice president tapped the self-described “12 th-generation son of the southwest” to co-chair its Latino engagement committee.
There’s no clear indicator yet that the former U.S. senator and attorney general of the United States of Colorado is recommending Biden’s policy approach, which includes curbing corporate corruption of the federal government and slashing climate-changing emissions.
But as Biden seeks to draw plain contrasts with President Donald Trump, government watchdogs say Salazar threatens to undermine the project’s promises to bring principles back to Washington, and could help Republicans obscure the Trump administration’s distinctively outright record of self– dealing and pandering to polluters. They see Salazar as an example of the business impact in politics and the constant motion of people in between government and market– the so-called “overload” that Trump famously guaranteed to drain pipes before stacking his Cabinet with dozens of former lobbyists and market insiders.
” Salazar’s lucrative spin through the revolving door from public servant to agent of the fossil fuel industry is no less indefensible when done by an Obama alumnus than when done by a member of Trump’s team,” said Jeff Hauser, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research study’s Revolving Door Project.
The Revolving Door Project and lots of other left-leaning organizations sent a letter to the Biden project today prompting the Democratic hopeful to avoid potential conflicts of interest by devoting to keep industry experts off his transition team and out of his administration, Politico reported.
Neither Salazar nor the Biden project responded to HuffPost’s emailed concerns.
Oil Lobbying For Trump-Linked Firm
In October, a month after getting Salazar’s recommendation, Biden revealed a sweeping plan to “restore ethics in federal government” and “lower the corrupting impact of cash in politics.”
The Biden proposal slams the Trump administration as “the most corrupt administration in modern history” and implicates it of taking apart the Obama administration’s strict ethics code. “It is time that we strengthen our lobbyist guidelines and hold public officials responsible,” the proposal checks out.
But Salazar, who likewise chaired Hillary Clinton’s shift team in 2016, has himself come under fire for perceived ethical deficiencies.
In June 2013, less than 2 months after stepping down as interior chief, Salazar ended up being a partner at WilmerHale, a D.C-based law and lobbying firm that represented BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and whose clients include several other drilling and mining companies that the Interior Department controls. At the time, he vowed to follow federal principles guidelines, “walling himself off from matters” he dealt with while at the federal agency, the International Service Times reported. That would include being “entirely segregated from incomes that can be found in from BP,” he stated.
Just because Salazar is powerful enough, and our principles laws so pitiful, that he has prevented triggering principles guidelines and norms around ‘registered lobbyists’ does not suggest his access peddling is healthy.
Jeff Hauser, director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Revolving Door Project
While Salazar appears to have actually kept his guarantee about BP, in early 2017, he represented Anadarko Petroleum, a since-acquired Texas-based oil and gas giant that owned a 25%stake in BP’s Macondo well and in 2015 was slapped with a $159 million fine for its participation in the Deepwater disaster.
The legal counsel Salazar supplied Anadarko was not associated with the Gulf spill, however rather to the surge of a severed flowline from among the company’s active wells in Firestone, Colorado, the International Service Times reported after acquiring emails another Anadarko legal representative sent out to then-Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office. The April 2017 blast ruined a home, killing two people and injuring 3 others. The business reached a settlement with victims’ families in 2018.
Salazar’s work for Anadarko in Colorado did not breach federal ethics rules, which use only to former Cabinet authorities attempting to influence the federal government, not state or city governments. Those rules forbid political appointees from lobbying federal firms for two years after leaving federal government service, and completely bar lobbying on particular matters they worked on while in federal government.
Still, good federal government groups say Salazar’s work for the oil and gas sector and failure to disclose his lobbying deal with behalf of Anadarko raise major issues. Policy positions aside, he must have been upfront about who’s paying him to lobby, stated Tyson Slocum, director of the progressive guard dog group Public Person’s energy program.
” You have to comprehend that the business lobbyist revolving door is one of the most troublesome in American politics since when industry can manage to buy a previous Cabinet secretary and U.S. senator, you get access and you get outcomes,” Slocum stated. “Part of that offer is you get out in front of that by getting