A senior Interior Department official received a partial ethics waiver that allowed her family to retain a financial interest in a Nevada ranch just before her husband’s family sold water rights associated with the property to a lithium mining company, according to financial documents recently released by the agency.
Karen Budd-Falen, associate deputy secretary at Interior, received the waiver while serving as a top lawyer for the department during the first Trump administration, the documents show. The paperwork was obtained and released by the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental group, and was first reported on by the website Public Domain.
Weeks after the waiver was issued by Interior ethics officials, the ranch owned by the family of Frank Falen — Budd-Falen’s husband — would secure a multimillion-dollar water rights agreement with Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass mine.
Budd-Falen failed to disclose this arrangement in multiple rounds of subsequent financial reporting to Interior ethics officials. Budd-Falen also later met in 2019 with mine executives at the Interior Department while the mine was seeking critical permitting approvals from the department, although both her husband and the company have characterized the meeting as informal.
