House Natural Resources Committee Democrats are pressing the Agriculture Department to reevaluate whether two senior advisers at the Forest Service must recuse themselves from interacting with an Idaho-based property rights group — and to determine whether one official may have continued to work for the group even after joining the Trump administration.
Ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, raised questions about Ken Verheyen, in a Wednesday letter shared exclusively with POLITICO’s E&E News.
The letter to Stuart Bender, director of the Agriculture Department’s Office of Ethics, details conflicting state and federal reports about Verheyen’s role with the Sawtooth Conservation and Recreation Alliance (SCRA). The Forest Service did not respond to a request for comment.
“A political appointee may have lied to your office about his relationship with an outside organization, the same organization from which the Under Secretary is recused,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to Michael Boren, USDA’s undersecretary for natural resources and environment.
