Wyoming attorney and rancher Karen Budd-Falen, who President Donald Trump appointed to serve in a senior role at the Department of the Interior, made remarks at an event last December that some experts said could amount to an admission of violating federal law, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
Budd-Falen was speaking at a Congressional Western Caucus event — an event that was captured on video and published online by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) — where she championed policy changes on grazing limits that she, as DOI associate deputy secretary, admitted to being “involved in.”
Specifically, Budd-Falen championed policy changes that relaxed “limits on grazing using a ‘categorical exclusion,’” the Post reported, a change that she directly benefited from as the partial owner along with her husband of “at least five cattle or ranch operations in Nevada and Wyoming,” each of them valued at more than $1 million.
The nonpartisan watchdog group Campaign for Accountability told the Post that the group plans to send a letter on Saturday demanding that Congress launch a probe into the legality of Budd-Falen’s on-camera admission.
“The situation with Karen Budd-Falen seems to be quite brazen in the scheme of conflicts of interest,” said Michelle Kuppersmith, executive director for Campaign for Accountability, speaking with the Post. “She is, by her own admission, working on policy for grazing that will likely directly impact her own financial interests. And they’re not even trying to hide it.”
Kuppersmith was not the only critic who believed Budd-Falen’s remarks could equate to an admission of a federal crime. Richard Painter, who previously served as President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer, told the Post that Budd-Falen’s remarks, if accurate, "would be a pretty slam-dunk financial conflict of interest."
