Vivek Ramaswamy’s High School Friend Is Working for DOGE at the Interior Department
And two former lobbyists join the department’s top ranks.
A new DOGE-linked political appointee has taken up residence at the Interior Department — and though he doesn’t appear to have any special expertise on environmental matters, he does have important connections. His name is Matt Luby and he’s Vivek Ramaswamy’s best friend from high school. A graduate of The Ohio State University, Luby worked for Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign before becoming involved with DOGE. Now, he is at the Interior Department, or DOI.
Luby, according to several inside sources, is working as an advisor in the department’s Office of Policy, Management and Budget, which oversees agency finances and manages personnel, among other major responsibilities. According to one source, Luby is the “right hand man” to Tyler Hassen, DOGE’s top dog at DOI. Hassen was recently elevated to a major post at the agency — he is now DOI’s principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, giving him immense sway over the operations of the department. “Hassen is running the damn agency,” said a source inside DOI, adding that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum “is just a figurehead.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Luby described how he stumbled into politics after years spent in the Seattle area working for tech companies.
“In February 2023, I got the oddest phone call of my life. It was my childhood friend Vivek Ramaswamy, he told me he was running for U.S. President, and he asked me to move back home and help him. I knew it was an adventure I couldn’t miss,” he wrote. “I ran policy for his presidential campaign and then transitioned into his chief of staff post-campaign. There was no tutorial for any of it. I was an outsider to politics, but it’s exactly because of my long background in tech that I’ve thrived.”
As Luby thrives, the Interior Department, under the influence of DOGE, is preparing for mass layoffs later this year. As those layoffs loom, droves of DOI employees are resigning, retiring or otherwise leaving the agency. Top officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service, scientists managing endangered grizzly bears, key IT staff in Washington, communications officials, and large numbers of young probationary employees are among those that are being pushed out of the agency.
Meanwhile, Luby is not the only Trump appointee newly arrived at DOI. The administration recently selected Matthew Giacona — a lobbyist for the offshore oil and gas industry — to help run the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees energy development in the Outer Continental Shelf.
Also joining DOI is Warren Hoggatt, who will be the next deputy solicitor for parks and wildlife, an important role that handles legal matters related to national parks and endangered species. Hoggatt appears to be joining the department from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, where a W. Noah Hoggatt worked as the top lawyer for DEQ chief Aurelia Skipwith Giacometto, herself an appointee at the Interior Department during Trump’s first term. Hoggatt also appears to have worked as an industry lobbyist. A person of the same name, Warren Noah Hoggatt, is listed on Louisiana lobbyist registration forms from 2020 as a representative of a slew of corporate interests, including the drilling company Range Resources and the electric utility Entergy.
In an email to his DEQ colleagues in March, Hoggatt announced that he was leaving the agency “in order to move into a federal position.” The Louisiana DEQ did not respond to a request for comment for this story, and requests to the Interior Department likewise received no response.
Well that's all we need.. more cronyism and more foxes guarding hen houses. This is the most corrupt, most perverse administration the country has ever been burned with.