Interior Dept. Nominee’s Rise A Win For His Former Lobbying Clients

Former industry clients of David Bernhardt, the acting secretary of the Interior Department and a longtime fossil fuel lobbyist, have enjoyed what appears to be privileged access to high-ranking political appointees at the federal agency. At a minimum, the list “demonstrates the breadth of Bernhardt’s potential conflicts of interest, and shows how entrenched the Acting Secretary was in the industries that he now regulates,” Brendan Fischer, director of the D.C.-based nonpartisan nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told HuffPost in an email. Fischer added that he expects Bernhardt is “savvy enough to facilitate that access without violating the letter of the ethics rules.”

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