Centennial State News

Protect the Public’s Trust, a watchdog organization, has identified what it claims are ethical concerns involving the Department of the Interior's Senior Counselor to the Secretary Elizabeth Klein, and has called on the department to provide public records regarding these issues.

According to Protect the Public’s Trust, Klein's work at the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) may conflict with positions she may take on problems involving states as parties.

“The Biden Administration promised the American public ‘the most ethically vigorous administration in history," Director of Protect the Public’s Trust Michael Chamberlain said on the group's website. “The American public should be able to trust that the conduct of high-level officials will be consistent with that promise. In light of the Biden Ethics Pledge’s 'Revolving Door Ban' it is difficult to reconcile Ms. Klein’s involvement with any of the more than 130 matters or the one-third of U.S. states the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center involved itself with during her tenure. The absence of a publicly available ethics waiver for Ms. Klein as well as the Department’s unwillingness to provide her recusal documents raise serious red flags.”

The potential issue stems from Klein's prior work as a deputy director of the Michael Bloomberg-funded SEEIC at New York University (NYU) School of Law, where she paid climate activists serving as special assistant attorneys general in lawsuits against oil companies.

"In Klein's case, she and her former employer appear to have acted as attorneys for as many as 17 states in their challenges to the former Administration on numerous high-profile regulations and agency actions," Chamberlain said, as reported by Legal Newsline.

However, the U.S. Department of Interior allegedly has been far from cooperative in terms of supplying ethics and recusal documents for Klein. Energy Policy Advocates, an open government, nonprofit organization, has been forced to sue the DOI to obtain such documents, according to Legal Newsline.

"Plaintiff’s request concerns ethics records of a senior Department official involved in major decision-making within the Department,” EPA lawyer Matthew Hardin wrote. “The public has a right to know whether or not senior officials are making conflicted decisions, and whether they disclosed conflicts in their ethics vetting process; the public is harmed on a daily basis as more decisions are made without ethical clarity.”

The DOI has refused EPA's request for ethics/recusal documents regarding Klein, whose nomination for deputy secretary was withdrawn in March due to her prior activity against the fossil fuels industry, according to Legal Newsline.

In response, the EPA filed a motion for a preliminary injunction ordering the DOI to immediately turn over Klein-related documents.

The EPA's FOIA request also seeks information about whether Klein was granted an ethics waiver by the department.