‘Revolving door’ May Allow Biden Admin’s Top Officials to Exert Influence Over Agencies They Led

A senior official in the Biden-Harris administration whose ties to environmental extremist groups drew scrutiny during her Senate confirmation hearings was selected to lead the anti-fossil fuel nonprofit The Wilderness Society when she leaves her current post. The non-profit’s PAC has donated more than $50,000 to many progressive candidates, including Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Bob Casey. D-Pa., and Kamala Harris, according to public records.  

Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the Bureau of Land Management, will assume the position of president with the nonprofit in February, according to the Associated Press. The news raises the possibility that other figures in the current administration may find new homes with influential environmental groups that worked closely with federal agencies under the Biden-Harris administration. 

The ethically questionable, and sometimes illegal, movement of employees between federal agencies and nonprofits and companies that have either lobbied those agencies or been overseen by them is what’s often referred to as the “revolving door” of government. 

Even though Trump has vowed to roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s climate agenda, these relationships will be maintained and could be strengthened as former federal employees under the current administration go to work for climate groups that will continue to lobby the agencies in support of the activists’ preferred policies. 

Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog nonprofit Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT), told Just the News that despite the Biden-Harris administration’s claims that it acted with a high degree of ethics and transparency, top officials acted completely contrary to these promises. 

“The revolving door is spinning faster than ever. People who came from powerful special interest groups into the administration are now leaving the administration to go to powerful special interest groups,” Chamberlain said. 

Friendly meetings

During the Biden-Harris administration, The Wilderness Society enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Department of the Interior, under which Stone-Manning’s bureau is housed. In 2023, the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) revealed that lobbyists with the Society brainstormed “legal and policy pathways” with DOI lawyers regarding the Twin Metals project in Minnesota. 

The Wilderness Society was the lead plaintiff challenging the critical minerals project. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, FGI obtained records showing coordination between the nonprofit and DOI policymakers and lawyers. This included a high-level policy meeting with lobbyists from the Society and then-Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau and Deputy Chief of Staff Kate Kelly. This meeting was omitted from Beaudreau’s public calendar. In 2022, the DOI announced it was canceling the leases held by Twin Metals Minnesota, terminating the critical minerals project, as The Wilderness Society had demanded. 

“The American public should be concerned when senior government officials and lobbyists of plaintiffs are not reporting meetings that appear to influence active litigation and major policy decisions,” Peter McGinnis, spokesperson for FGI, said in a statement last year. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grilled Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the matter in May during a fiscal year 2025 budget request hearing of the Senate Natural Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

In the course of the tense exchange, Hawley asked Haaland about meetings her staff had with The Wilderness Society, which Hawley described as a “left-wing environmentalist pressure group” funded in large part by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, “who has routed his money through all manner of dark money groups.” 

Hawley asked Haaland if anyone in leadership at the Interior Department had met with the Wilderness Society. “I’m sure we’ve met with a lot of groups and organizations in the work we do when we’re discussing the environment,” Haaland answered.

In an interview in May, McGinnis said he was grateful that Hawley questioned Haaland about the information FTG’s FOIA request revealed. 

“Unfortunately, the senator’s exchange with Secretary Haaland shows her determination to avoid accountability for what happened at the Interior on her watch. We’re no closer to knowing for certain whether secret, inappropriate and  possibly illegal meetings took place and how they influenced DOI’s final decision on the Twin Metals project,” McGinnis said.

Career bureaucrats 

Trump hasn’t nominated anyone to head the BLM yet, but he has nominated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to replace Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright to replace Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. Granholm achieved notoriety when her much-touted cross-country road trip in an EV went sideways. When the first wave of her fleet arrived at a local charging station, they discovered that one charger was broken and the others were occupied. When a working charger opened up, a staffer parked a gas car there to save the spot for Granholm.

Rick Whitbeck, founder of Power Performance Strategies, an industrial consulting firm, told Just the News that, while activists groups will lose these climate-friendly heads at agencies that oversee a lot of decisions impacting the oil and gas industry, they will still have friends at those agencies — leftovers from the Biden-Harris administration. 

“There are career bureaucrats who are very committed to their ideology. Trump can’t get rid of them all,” Whitbeck said. 

He said Trump can do a lot to claw back the excess of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but the deep state has a momentum that won’t end on a single administration. 

“This isn’t going to be a scalpel approach, but Trump can’t just take a bulldozer to it either,” Whitbeck said. 

Spiking agendas

Stone-Manning faced fierce opposition from Senate Republicans during her confirmation hearing. Her critics labeled her an “eco-terrorist.” In 1989 when she was a graduate student at the University of Montana, Stone-Manning sent a letter to Forest Service officials warning that metal spikes had been driven into trees in the national forests of Idaho. 

“Tree spiking” is a tactic that has been used by anti-logging activists to stop timber harvesting. While activists often claim the practice is only intended to damage equipment, workers’ lives have been threatened when saw blades break on the spikes.

Stone-Manning maintained that she played only a peripheral role in the efforts of Earth First activists. She said she only retyped and mailed the letter and did so out of concern that the authorities be notified. An agent who investigated the incident disputed her account based on statements from one of the co-conspirators, but another denied she was involved with the tree spiking. Stone-Manning was granted legal immunity in exchange for testifying against the two men. 

In 2021, prior to her confirmation hearings, PPT filed a complaint with the attorney for the District of Columbia, accusing Stone-Manning of lying about having never “been the target” of a criminal investigation in written testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Whether she was ultimately charged or convicted in the case is irrelevant; she was being investigated by federal authorities in the tree spiking case, and the fact of her immunity undeniably reinforces this point,” the complaint said.

During her confirmation hearings in 2021, the tree-spiking saga was a point of contention for her critics. “She conspired with eco-terrorists. She lied to the Senate. She still holds radically reprehensible views,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News at the time. 

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who recently switched parties from Democrat to Independent, defended her. The Senate confirmed her on a 50-45 vote. 

Lingering influence

Under Stone-Manning’s leadership, the Bureau of Land Management oversaw a staggering decline in the number of oil and gas leases, increased royalty rates oil companies pay, and finalized a rule allowing lands to be leased for conservation, meaning the acreage prohibits almost all types of development. 

Along with her ideological positions, Stone-Manning will bring to The Wilderness Alliance her connections to the Department of the Interior, an agency that has worked closely with the alliance and other environmental groups in the past. Haaland and Granholm, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, may also find their way to positions at organizations looking to maintain what they had under President Joe Biden. 

“They may not be the exact same groups, but they’re still going into the same world and exerting the same type of influence on policy, or at least attempting to have the influence they had when they were inside the administration,” Chamberlain said. 

Reprinted with permission from Just The News by Kevin Killough.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.