"Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee today called for a criminal investigation into former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, alleging that the Trump administration official and others engaged in a campaign finance “quid pro quo” with a politically connected Arizona developer.
Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, outlined the allegations in a 37-page letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The complaint to the Justice Department focuses on a 2017 decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service to reverse its long-standing demands for an environmental review tied to a nearly 28,000-home residential development in Benson, Ariz., known as the Villages at Vigneto.
Democratic lawmakers began reviewing that decision in 2019, after career FWS employee Steve Spangle, who had reviewed the development as supervisor of the Arizona Ecological Services Field Office, told The Arizona Republic and Arizona Daily Star that he had faced political pressure to clear the way for the project (Greenwire, July 9, 2019)."
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