OFFICE OF 

INSPECTOR GENERAL 

U.S.DEPARTMENT OFTHE INTERIOR 

Alleged Ethics Violations by 

a Senior Political DOI Employee 

INVESTIGATION 

This is a revised version of the report prepared for public release. 

Report Number: 19-0396 Date Posted on Web: June 12, 2020 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

We investigated allegations that a senior political employee of the U.S. Department of the 

Interior (DOI) violated their Federal ethics pledge under Executive Order 13770 by 

communicating with a former employer during the required 2-year recusal period following the 

employee’s Federal appointment in the spring of 2017. 

We found that the senior political employee notified the DOI’s Departmental Ethics Office 

(DEO) three times between the summer of 2017 and the summer of 2018 that they planned to 

interact with individuals or entities connected to their previous employer. In one instance, the 

employee declined to meet with an individual because the DEO had not advised whether the 

meeting was permissible; in the other two instances, the DEO advised the employee interacting 

with certain entities was permissible because the entities were not directly related to the former 

employer. We determined that the employee’s actions in these instances were proper and 

accorded with DEO guidance. 

We did find, however, that the employee did not seek ethics guidance before contacting a 

scientist who worked for their former employer in late 2017 and then meeting with that scientist 

the next month. We determined that these contacts violated the senior political employee’s ethics 

pledge, but the evidence indicates that the employee interacted with the scientist under the 

mistaken belief that these communications were permissible because they involved sharing 

scientific data. We found no evidence that these contacts were used for the benefit of the senior 

political employee or for the benefit of the former employer or the scientist. 

We provided our report to the Chief of Staff for the Office of the Secretary for any action 

deemed appropriate. 

II. BACKGROUND 

Before coming to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) in 2017, the senior political 

employee worked for a company (which we will refer to in this report as Company 1) that 

provides various environmental support services to its clients. Company 1 also provides data to 

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to help the FWS protect endangered species from 

being disturbed by human activity. 

A senior executive of Company 1 also served as a senior executive of a second company, 

referred to here as Company 2, which collects and provides scientific data to its clients. 

Company 2 also interacts with the FWS, submitting applications to the FWS for permits to do 

work that might affect some endangered species. Another company discussed in this report, 

Company 3, partners with Company 2 to perform certain scientific tasks. 

Figure 1, on p. 2, illustrates the relationships between the entities and individuals we discuss in 

this report. As shown in the figure, the senior political employee’s responsibilities at Company 1, 

their former employer, included overseeing a joint venture (Company 4) that was partially owned 

by Company 1 and by two other corporations (Companies 5 and 6). 

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ior DOI 

Pol• lcal Emp. ~ 

pa rtia I ---owner -

parti al 

o,w ner Scient:Jst 

- pa rtia I --­ owner 

Sen ior 

Ex ecu t iv e 

partnered 

Execut ive 

- --- -t o perform - - ---

scie nt ific tasks 

COIDl)any 2 Coml)any 3 

COIUJ)any 6 

Figure 1: Relationships Between Entities and Individuals in This Report 

III. FACTS 

Below we detail the facts relevant to this case. We explain the senior political employee’s 

official duties at the DOI and their obligation, as a political appointee, not to contact their former 

employer, Company 1, for 2 years from the date of their appointment. We then discuss instances 

within that 2-year recusal period in which the employee interacted with, or planned to interact 

with, employees or entities connected to Company 1. In some of these instances, the employee 

interacted with these parties after receiving advice and clearance from the DOI’s Departmental 

Ethics Office (DEO), but twice the employee did not receive such clearance. 

A. Senior DOI Political Employee’s Ethics Responsibilities and Training 

After leaving Company 1, the employee came to work for the DOI in the spring of 2017. As a 

political appointee, it was required under Executive Order 13770, that the employee sign an 

ethics pledge agreeing not to contact their former employer for a period of 2 years from the date 

of their appointment. 

According to training records provided by the DEO, the employee received ethics training 2 days 

after starting at the DOI. The employee told us that the training generally covered financial 

disclosure forms and conflicts of interest, and that the employee and the ethics official who gave 

the training discussed the employee’s current position at the DOI and employment history at 

Company 1. The employee told us, however, that they did not recall their ethics training covering 

the ethics pledge or its requirements; in addition, the DEO training records did not specify 

whether the training addressed matters related to the pledge. 

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The senior political employee signed the ethics pledge in 2017, about 2 months after beginning 

with the DOI. 

B. Senior DOI Political Employee Sought Ethics Advice in Summer 2017 Before a 

Conference Call 

In the summer of 2017, an executive of Company 3 (the company partnered with Company 2, 

which, as Figure 1 shows, shared a senior executive with the senior political employee’s former 

employer), emailed the senior political employee requesting a conference call the following 

week with the employee and the senior Company 2 executive to discuss various projects. Two 

days later, the employee emailed the DEO’s general inbox asking whether their ethics pledge 

recusal period would apply to such a conversation, since the senior Company 2 executive was 

also a senior executive at Company 1. 

According to the employee, the DEO did not respond to this email in time for the planned call, so 

the employee told the Company 3 executive that they could not talk with the senior Company 2 

executive until clearance was received to do so. Instead, the employee said, the employee and the 

Company 3 executive spoke at the scheduled time, without the senior Company 2 executive. The 

employee characterized the call as a consultation and told us they had similar meetings with 

other companies as part of their official duties. 

An ethics attorney with the DEO replied to the senior political employee’s email, but not until 

after the call had taken place. The attorney requested more details about the relationship between 

the employee and the senior Company 2 executive, but the employee told us they never 

responded to the attorney’s email because they did not think anything had been discussed during 

the call that would have needed DEO clearance. 

C. Senior DOI Political Employee Did Not Seek Ethics Advice Before Requesting Data 

From Company 1 

In 2017, the senior political employee, as part of their official duties, began working with 

employees from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Geological Survey 

(USGS) to determine possible new methods for tracking endangered species. 

As part of this project, the employee emailed an FWS supervisory wildlife biologist in late 2017 

and asked for data on an endangered species. The supervisory wildlife biologist responded with 

some historical data; the senior political employee then asked whether any current data was 

available, or if the employee should get the needed information from a scientist with Company 1. 

The supervisory wildlife biologist responded that they did not have current information and 

recommended that the senior political employee contact the Company 1 scientist, who, the 

biologist said, was currently doing work related to the species. 

The senior political employee forwarded this last email to the Company 1 scientist that same day, 

asking for the data and noting, “This is for a FWS/USGS/BLM science experiment we are 

running.” The employee copied the BLM and USGS employees involved in the project, as well 

as two FWS employees, but did not send this email to any non-Federal parties other than the 

Company 1 scientist. 

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The next day, the Company 1 scientist emailed the senior political employee with some recent 

data, and the employee thanked the scientist for their help. 

The employee told us they emailed the Company 1 scientist based on the FWS supervisory 

wildlife biologist’s recommendation and did not contact the DEO before sending the email. The 

employee told us they had thought at the time that they did not need to obtain ethics advice 

because they were asking for scientific data that Company 1 was required to provide to the DOI 1 

and not discussing any type of permit or any actions Company 1 was seeking from the DOI; the 

employee said their ethics training earlier that year had mentioned “certain exemptions” to 

conflict-of-interest rules if the purpose of the contact with the former employer involved “purely 

scientific data.” 2 The employee said they had also thought that Company 1 providing data to the 

DOI would not benefit the company in any way. 

D. Senior DOI Political Employee Did Not Seek Ethics Advice Before Meeting With 

Company 1 Scientist 

Sometime after the exchange of emails between the senior political employee and the Company 

1 scientist, a BLM analyst involved in the endangered species project requested a meeting with 

the employee, the Company 1 scientist, and several FWS and USGS employees. The employee’s 

assistant scheduled the meeting, which took place in early 2018; the assistant invited everyone 

who had received the BLM analyst’s email. The meeting took place at the employee’s DOI 

office; the employee, the Company 1 scientist, the FWS supervisory wildlife biologist, and the 

BLM analyst were present, as well as representatives from the FWS, the BLM, and the USGS. 

The employee said the purpose of the meeting was for the BLM analyst to obtain information 

from experts about the endangered species they were studying. The employee said the Company 

1 scientist attended the meeting as one of the experts. The BLM analyst confirmed that the 

meeting participants all had “on-the-ground experience” in this type of research, and they 

discussed the species in the meeting. 

The employee told us they did not seek ethics advice before participating in the meeting. As with 

the email sent to the Company 1 scientist in late 2017, the employee said they had believed when 

they met with the scientist that such a meeting was permissible because the purpose of the 

meeting was to share scientific data and because the meeting did not include discussions about 

permits or about actions Company 1 was seeking from the DOI. 

A DOI ethics attorney, who gave the employee ethics advice later in 2018 on matters related to 

Companies 2 and 5 (which were associated with the employee’s former employer, Company 1), 

told us that if they had known about this contact with the Company 1 scientist, they would have 

advised against it and would have explained that ethics rules covering former employers had no 

scientific or technical exceptions. The ethics attorney also said the employee could have 

1 The FWS supervisory wildlife biologist explained to us that Company 1 was required to provide scientific data on certain 

endangered species to the FWS under 50 C.F.R. § 18.128 (“Mitigation, monitoring, and reporting requirements”) and the letters 

of authorization the company was operating under at the time. 2 There is an exception under 5 C.F.R. § 2641.201(b)(3), but it does not apply to current Federal employees. 

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complied with the ethics pledge and accomplished the goal of obtaining data and information 

from Company 1 simply by having another DOI employee interact with the scientist. 

E. Senior DOI Political Employee Sought Ethics Advice About Permit Applications 

The senior political employee told us that in the spring of 2018 they learned that Companies 2 

and 3 had submitted applications to the BLM and the FWS for permits to work on public land. 

The employee emailed the DEO to ask whether they could be involved with the permit 

applications, explaining in the email that Company 1 was their former employer and that the 

senior Company 2 executive was also an executive of Company 1. The employee asked whether, 

based on these factors, the “ban on engaging former employers” would apply. 

The employee received a response from the ethics attorney, who told the employee there was no 

prohibition against the employee working on the permit application because the senior Company 

2 executive, in that capacity, was not their former employer. In the attorney’s email to the 

employee, the attorney wrote that the definition of former employer, as interpreted by the U.S. 

Office of Government Ethics, did not extend to entities for which—as in this situation—the only 

link to the Federal employee was an officer of a third-party company who also had an interest in 

the actual former employer. The attorney explained to us that the employee “did not have an 

employer or client relationship with [Company 2],” and so the employee “has no recusals with 

regard to [Company 2].” 

The senior political employee said that in the summer of 2018 they attended a 30-minute meeting 

about the FWS permit application with FWS employees, the senior Company 2 executive, and a 

Company 3 executive. The senior political employee said the meeting’s purpose was to introduce 

everyone to each other and to tell the company executives to work with the FWS employees to 

obtain the permit they sought. The employee explained that they had facilitated similar 

interactions with other companies as part of their DOI responsibilities. 

F. Senior DOI Political Employee Sought Ethics Advice About Another Permit 

Application 

As shown above in Figure 1, Company 1 is a partial owner of Company 4, which the senior 

political employee oversaw during their time with Company 1. The employee learned in the 

summer of 2018 that another of Company 4’s partial owners, Company 5, was also involved in 

one of the permit applications discussed in the previous section. Because of this relationship to 

the former employer, the senior political employee emailed the ethics attorney to ask if they 

could still work on the application. 

Later that summer, the ethics attorney emailed the employee to say that the employee’s 

involvement in the application was not prohibited because neither Company 2 nor Company 5 

was their former employer. The attorney concluded in the email that Company 5 was not 

considered a former employer or client under the ethics pledge, and that the employee’s former 

relationship with Companies 1 and 4 did not bar participation in the permit application. The 

employee told us that their involvement in the application included responding to inquiries from 

the media and attending meetings with FWS staff. 

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IV. ANALYSIS 

As noted above, the senior political employee’s actions in these events implicate the ethics 

pledge they signed. Executive Order 13770, Paragraph 6, “Ethics Commitments by Executive 

Branch Appointees,” requires every appointee in every executive agency to sign an ethics pledge 

that includes the following commitment: “I will not for a period of 2 years after the date of my 

appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and 

substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and 

contracts.” 3 

The facts in this case break down into two general categories: (1) instances in which the senior 

political employee sought the DEO’s advice before taking an action, and (2) those in which the 

senior political employee did not seek such guidance. We analyze the events in those categories 

below. 

A. Senior DOI Political Employee Sought DEO Advice Before Interacting With 

Companies 2 and 5 

As discussed above, the senior political employee sought ethics advice from the DEO before 

their contacts with Companies 2 and 5. In doing so, the employee’s actions implicate 5 C.F.R. 

§ 2635.107(b), the so-called “safe harbor” provision of Federal ethics regulations, which states, 

“Disciplinary action for violating this part or any supplemental agency regulations will not be 

taken against an employee who has engaged in conduct in good faith reliance upon the advice of 

an agency ethics official, provided that the employee, in seeking such advice, has made full 

disclosure of all relevant circumstances.” Therefore, the key question here is whether the 

employee fully disclosed all relevant circumstances to the DEO and then relied in good faith on 

the DEO’s advice. If those elements are satisfied, the employee would not face disciplinary 

action even if the interactions violated ethics rules. 

We found no evidence that the employee made anything less than a full disclosure of all relevant 

circumstances in discussions with ethics attorneys about the companies. We also found that the 

employee appeared to rely in good faith on the DEO’s advice. With that in mind, we concluded 

that the employee satisfied the elements of 5 C.F.R. § 2635.107(b). In making this finding, we 

note that the employee’s behavior in these instances is an example of a DOI employee properly 

using the DEO to ensure their behavior did not violate the ethics pledge or any other Federal 

standards of ethical conduct. 

3 The term “particular matter involving specific parties” is used in Federal regulations governing personal and business 

relationships (5 C.F.R. § 2635.502) and further clarified in Office of Government Ethics (OGE) memorandum DO-06-029. For 

the purposes of 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502, Federal regulations state that a particular matter involving specific parties “typically 

involves a specific proceeding affecting the legal rights of the parties, or an isolatable transaction or related set of transactions 

between identified parties” (5 C.F.R. § 2640.102(l)). OGE memo DO-06-029 clarifies that examples of particular matters 

involving specific parties include “contracts, grants, licenses,” and other similar specific actions taken with regard to, or on behalf 

of, a party—a narrower interpretation of the term than that used for analysis under the Federal ethics pledge. Therefore, an action 

that might not violate 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502 because it does not meet the regulation’s definition of a “particular matter involving 

specific parties” might still violate the Federal ethics pledge. 

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B. Senior DOI Political Employee Did Not Seek DEO Advice Before Contacting 

Company 1 Scientist 

In contrast to the incidents described above, the senior political employee did not seek guidance 

from the DEO before the 2017 email exchange with the scientist who worked for Company 1, 

their former employer, or before participating in the 2018 meeting with the same scientist. Due 

to the employee’s prior employment at Company 1, we must consider the interactions with the 

Company 1 scientist to determine whether the employee failed to fulfill their obligation, under 

the ethics pledge, to be recused from matters related to their former employer for 2 years after 

the date of their 2017 appointment to Federal service. 

As previously stated, Paragraph 6 of Executive Order 13770 prohibits an employee from 

contacting their former employer for a period of 2 years from the date of their appointment to 

their Federal position. An Office of Government Ethics (OGE) memorandum, DO-09-011, 

provides more information on the relevant ethics pledge obligations. DO-09-011 explains that in 

order to determine whether an appointee’s activities concern any particular matters involving 

specific parties, ethics officials must follow the longstanding interpretation of the term 

“particular matter involving specific parties” from 5 C.F.R. § 2641.201(h). Notably, however, 

the OGE memorandum states that the ethics pledge expands the scope of the term to include 

“any meeting or other communication with a former employer or former client relating to the 

performance of the appointee’s official duties, unless the communication applies to a particular 

matter of general applicability and participation in the meeting or other event is open to all 

interested parties.” The OGE states that meetings need not “be open to every comer, but should 

include a multiplicity of parties.” The memorandum continues, “The purpose of this expansion 

of the traditional definition is to address concerns that former employers and clients may appear 

to have privileged access, which they may exploit to influence an appointee out of the public 

view.” 

In sum, under the standard articulated in the OGE memorandum, the ethics pledge bans any 

meeting or other communication with a former employer relating to the performance of the 

appointee’s official duties, regardless of whether the interactions amount to the longstanding 

definition of a particular matter. The OGE memorandum also creates a two-part test for 

exceptions to the ethics pledge’s ban on an appointee communicating with a former employer or 

client. An appointee may communicate with a former employer or client if the communication is 

(1) “about a particular matter of general applicability” and (2) “made at a meeting or other event 

at which participation is open to all interested parties”; this second part may be satisfied if the 

meeting includes a “multiplicity of parties.” 

1. Email Exchange With Company 1 Scientist 

There is no doubt that the senior political employee’s 2017 email exchange with the Company 1 

scientist constituted communication with their former employer relating to the performance of 

official duties and was therefore prohibited under the ethics pledge. Moreover, the evidence 

established that this communication did not satisfy the two-part exception articulated in the OGE 

memorandum that requires the communication to be both “about a particular matter of general 

applicability” and “open to all interested parties.” As noted above, the communication fails to 

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meet the second test because the scientist was the only “interested party”; that is, the only 

non-Federal party to the communication. 

We note that the employee told us that they believed at the time of the email exchange that ethics 

advice was not needed because they were asking Company 1 for scientific data that Company 1 

was required to report to the DOI, and, therefore, were not discussing permits or any actions the 

company wanted the DOI to take. The employee said they had also thought that Company 1 

providing data to the DOI would not benefit the company in any way. In addition, the employee 

said, they had thought the ethics rules did not apply to this situation because their ethics training 

had mentioned exemptions to conflict-of-interest rules if the purpose of the contact with the 

former employer involved scientific data. As mentioned above in footnote 2, however, this 

exception does not apply to current employees.4 

Accordingly, we concluded that the employee’s 2017 email exchange with the Company 1 

scientist violated their ethics pledge. This finding is consistent with the OGE memorandum’s 

purpose of protecting against even the appearance of privileged access being given to former 

employers. 

2. Meeting With Company 1 Scientist 

As with the 2017 email exchange, the employee’s meeting with the Company 1 scientist in 2018 

violated the ethics pledge because it constituted a meeting with the former employer of the 

employee relating to the performance of official duties. The OGE two-part exception to the ban 

did not apply since the meeting was not open to all interested parties. 

The employee said they did not contact the DEO before attending the meeting because the 

purpose of the meeting was not to discuss DOI actions or permits related to Company 1, but 

rather to allow the BLM analyst to obtain scientific information from the Company 1 scientist 

and the other participants. The employee said they believed at the time that there were 

exemptions to the conflict-of-interest rules if the contact with the former employer involved 

scientific data. As noted above, however, such considerations do not apply to this analysis.

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We therefore concluded that the employee’s attendance of the meeting violated their ethics 

pledge. Again, this finding is consistent with the OGE memorandum’s purpose of protecting 

against the appearance of privileged access. 

4 We note that although the potential benefit of an employee’s actions is not part of the ethics pledge analysis, such 

considerations are an element of 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502(a), the Federal ethics provision governing personal and business 

relationships. Since the senior political employee worked for Company 1 within 1 year of sending the emails to the scientist in 

2017, we reviewed whether the senior political employee ran afoul of Section 502(a) as well. Section 502 has a considerably 

narrower interpretation of the phrase “particular matter involving specific parties” than the ethics pledge prohibition analyzed 

above, and the email to the Company 1 scientist does not meet that definition for the purposes of Section 502. Therefore, we 

concluded that this email exchange did not violate 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502(a). 5 As with the email exchange discussed above, we reviewed whether the senior political employee’s 2018 meeting contravened 

their obligations under 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502(a) and found that the meeting with the Company 1 scientist did not rise to the level of 

a “particular matter involving specific parties” within the scope of Section 502(a). Therefore, we concluded that this meeting did 

not violate 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502(a). 

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For both interactions with the Company 1 scientist, the evidence shows that the employee acted 

under the mistaken belief that communications involving scientific data were permissible. We 

also found no evidence that they used either interaction for their own benefit or for the benefit of 

Company 1 or the scientist. 

V. SUBJECT 

A senior DOI political employee. 

VI. DISPOSITION 

We provided our report to the Chief of Staff for the Office of the Secretary for any action 

deemed appropriate. 

9 
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