WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - A group that monitors conflicts of interest among government officials believes that climate activist Elizabeth Klein, now serving as senior counselor to Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, may have some problems.
Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, said that ethics regulations and the Biden Administration's "ethics pledge" are crystal clear: "no official is to participate in any decision, deliberation or action on a particular matter where they or their former employer were involved as a party or where they represented a party."
The controversy involves Klein's previous work on climate change litigation brought by state attorneys general. She served as deputy director of the Michael Bloomberg-funded State Energy & Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) at the New York University (NYU) School of Law, which paid the salaries of climate activists operating under the titles of special assistant attorneys general in order to sue Big Oil.
Those Bloomberg-funded lawyers have assisted in suits against BP, Citgo, Chevron, and more than 20 other fossil fuel companies alleging they are responsible for damage caused by climate change – suits, some defense lawyers say, that rely more on PR campaigns than sound legal arguments.
Critics say Klein's work at the SEEIC could conflict with positions she may take on issues involving states as parties.
"In Klein's case, she and her former employer appear to have acted as attorneys for as many as 17 states in their challenges to the former Administration on numerous high profile regulations and agency actions," said Chamberlain, who served four years at the U.S. Department of Education in the office of Communications and Outreach.
"The bottom line is that Klein should be restricted from participating in any particular matter involving those states," he said. "As senior counselor to the Secretary, this affects a significant portion of her duties, and we believe there should be no reason the Department of the Interior’s Ethics Office can not provide to the public any recusals or waivers she received."
Earlier this month, Energy Policy Advocates, an open government, nonprofit organization, sued Interior for failing to immediately respond to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request involving Klein. The suit, filed at the District of Columbia, claims the department unlawfully denied a speedy processing of ethics/recusal memoranda and documents, and unfairly treated the group as a commercial requester when it has previously treated it as a media outlet with FOIA fees being waived.
The group's FOIA request also seeks information as to whether the department granted Klein an ethics waiver.
Her initial entry into federal government was met with immediate opposition as senators in two energy rich states, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, asked for Klein's name to be withdrawn as deputy secretary of Interior.
Manchin, whose support is crucial to Biden's agenda, chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and expects his coal communities to have a seat at the table on energy discussions.
Murkowski, who also sits on Energy and Natural Resources, wants to grow fossil fuel and renewable energy development in her state. She was reportedly concerned over Klein's activism and criticisms of the oil and gas sector in the past, according to Politico.
A conservation group sympathetic to Klein, however, doesn't believe she is conflicted in her role as senior counselor.
“She was bumped from her confirmed position to a non-confirmed policy advisor position because Senator Murkowski objected to her being nominated for deputy secretary,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “My understanding of her was that she was well qualified and generally was going to be a good conservation steward in that position and then she was unfortunately thrown under the bus.”
Hartl said that having a particular position on any given issue doesn't mean one is conflicted.
“That level of conflict would preclude anyone on either side from taking a job because they have an interest in an issue there because we all do things as advocates that advocate for our position, but that's not a conflict of interest,” Hartl said. “That's simply doing work on behalf of one side of an issue or another.”
He said that her connections at SEEIC were not to states.
“Her connection is to the law school and then it's even more indirect to Michael Bloomberg," he said. "So, it's not a legal conflict of interest because she derives no benefit financially or otherwise from something that is several steps removed from what she did and there's no ethical conflict because she didn't represent states.”
Regarding Klein’s sympathetic or nonsympathetic position towards states that derive money from resource extraction, Hartl replied, “Yes, she might not be but that's not an ethical conflict for the Department of Interior. She has taken a policy position.”
Hartl said that an ethics waiver would only be required by Klein on a case-by-case basis as specific issues emerge.
“If there's a specific conflict that their ethics lawyers flag...but it's not broad,” Hartl added. “It's a specific case by case thing."
After Klein's name was pulled from consideration as deputy secretary, Biden nominated energy attorney Tommy Beaudreau, a pick favored by Murkowski but which has rankled some conservation and progressive groups, according to a report in Mother Jones.
The Center for Biological Diversity was among 30 groups urging Manchin to vote no on Beaudreau, an energy attorney with Latham & Watkins in Los Angeles, saying he is "too cozy" with the fossil fuel industry.
The article compares Beaudreau to Trump's Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who disclosed having had 17 clients with potential business before Interior. Beaudreau reportedly disclosed having had 35 such clients and made twice as much money as Bernhardt from "fossil fuel drilling and pipeline firms to offshore wind developers," the article says.
Hartl was quoted in the article saying that potential conflict was "pretty disqualifying. This is a massive amount of conflict, and frankly he has biases that I think are going to be difficult to reconcile.”