PUBLIC RECORDS: Resumes reveal deep corporate ties at Trump's Interior Department
Plus, a top DOI lawyer’s financial disclosure statement.
One of the services we provide here at Public Domain is offering our readers access to government records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Whether you’re a journalist, an activist, a government official or a concerned citizen, we want Public Domain to be a repository of primary sources that can inform your work.
When we report on political appointees at a powerful agency like the Interior Department, we often start with the basics — we file records requests for their calendars, their resumes, their financial disclosure statements and the like. This enables us to understand where these appointees come from, where their money is invested, who they worked for in the past, and who they are interacting with now that they are in positions of power. Among other things, this sort of reporting allows us to probe for potential conflicts of interest within government.
As a hypothetical, let’s say one of Trump’s appointees spent his entire career working for the oil and gas industry in Texas. Well, we want to know whether that appointee is now influencing oil and gas policy. We want to know whether he is meeting with a former employer or otherwise engaging in activities that could benefit a former employer. We want to know if he is now shaping policy in a manner that enriches the very industry that once paid his bills. This is an essential function of journalism. We are on guard against corruption — we don’t want our country to turn into some tin-pot petrostate.
And so, you will find a set of documents below that contain the resumes of five top Trump appointees who now oversee the Interior Department. Also included below is the financial disclosure statement for one of the top lawyers working for Trump’s DOI. On their own, these are simple documents, but even simple documents can lay the foundation for important stories.
In fact, these documents tell an interesting story on their own. The resumes below — most of which haven’t been previously published — belong to some of the most influential appointees at DOI. Tyler Hassen, for instance, is the leading DOGE operative at DOI, and was recently elevated to serve as the agency’s principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget. This role gives him immense sway over the finances, personnel policy and general operations of the Interior Department. During his tenure at DOI so far, Hassen has overseen the decimation of the agency — the mass firings of civil servants, followed by widespread resignations and retirements. The policies he has helped implement have affected the lives of thousands and have left huge holes in the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and many other key DOI agencies. And in a secretarial order last week, Hassen was handed even more power. He is now overseeing a massive organizational restructuring at DOI that will likely lead to more layoffs.
What did Hassen do before being endowed with this power to reshape America’s most important environmental institutions? He spent more than 15 years working for a holding company that has interests in oil and gas drilling and other industrial sectors. Prior to that he spent a couple years as an investment banker for Morgan Stanley.
Stephanie Holmes is another DOGE operative at DOI, where she is helping oversee personnel policy. Like Hassen, she has been deeply involved in the effort to push out the agency’s civil servants. Before joining DOI, she had a brief stint at a nuclear energy start up that has ties to the current energy secretary Chris Wright. Earlier in her career she spent nearly ten years doing legal work for Southern Company Gas, a natural gas and energy services giant based in Atlanta.
Then there’s Warren Noah Hoggatt, who was recently selected to be the Interior Department’s deputy solicitor for parks and wildlife, a role that shapes DOI’s legal posture towards national parks and endangered species. Hoggatt joins DOI from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, where he was the top lawyer serving under DEQ chief Aurelia Skipwith Giacometto, herself a former DOI political appointee during Trump’s first term. Hoggatt’s employment history shows he previously worked for Chevron and was a lobbyist in Louisiana for a variety of corporate interests, among other roles.
Richard Goldberg has also joined DOI as a senior advisor to the Secretary. It is unclear why he landed at DOI, given that his resume describes him as a “pro-Trump media surrogate on foreign policy” who makes regular appearances on Fox News. He served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term and prior to that worked on Capitol Hill for the GOP. Goldberg’s presence at DOI has not previously been reported.
See their resumes below:
Public Domain has also obtained the financial disclosure statement for Gregory Zerzan, who is working at DOI as the principal deputy solicitor, a top legal role. Among other interesting details, his statement identifies him as a past employee of Koch Industries, the industrial behemoth run by conservative megadonor Charles Koch, who has long funded efforts to erode environmental protections. When Zerzan turns 67, he will be eligible for a Koch Industries pension plan worth some $2,100 a month. He also has ties to enCore Energy Corp, a uranium extraction company, where he served as general counsel in 2022 and 2023.
Public Domain has filed scores of FOIA requests with DOI since January. These are some of the first records we have received. We expect more to arrive soon. As documents come in, we will share them with you so that you can have direct access to this important information. We are also preparing to file litigation against DOI to compel disclosure of government documents in a more timely manner. If you want to support our litigation work, please consider upgrading to paid subscriber status.
More on Tyler Hassen…https://open.substack.com/pub/lagirl331/p/burgum-gives-control-of-natural-resources?r=1ljlmg&utm_medium=ios