Interior
selects Bundy supporter who favors ‘war’ against the BLM as senior
legal adviser
The Department of the Interior has selected Karen Budd-Falen, an anti-public lands advocate, for a senior legal position at the department.
The move is controversial: Budd-Falen is an ally of right-wing extremist Cliven Bundy, who is best known for leading an armed 2014 standoff with federal officials in Nevada after he refused to pay his grazing fees.
Budd-Falen is a Wyoming-based
property rights attorney who worked as a member of the Trump
administration’s transition team for the Interior Department. She is
scheduled to begin work on November 1 as the deputy solicitor for Parks and
Wildlife working on issues related to endangered species, wildlife refuges, and
national monuments.
The attorney had
reportedly been previously considered to lead the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management (BLM). But Budd-Falen withdrew her name from consideration for the
top BLM spot in March, claiming the
decision was made after she was asked to sell her interest in her family ranch.
Others contend she
withdrew because her anti-public lands and anti-federal land management
positions raised questions about her ability to pass Senate confirmation.
“Karen Budd-Falen is too extreme to be trusted with our national heritage,” Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project, said Monday in a statement. “Someone who sides with armed militia groups and anti-public land zealots should not have a high-level job at the Department of Interior.”
The Western Values
Project, based in Whitefish, Montana, is a nonprofit group that focuses on
protecting the environment and defending public lands in the western United
States.
In November 2017, when
Budd-Falen was being considered to head the BLM, she gave a talk in Montana
that drew more than 100
protesters who picketed outside the event in the town of
Hamilton; they hoped to call attention to her track-record of support for
privatizing public lands.
Budd-Falen
was floated to head the BLM & is highly controversial in the public lands
world for her support in the so-called county supremacy movement and her
support of Cliven Bundy and his defiance of federal lands law
Among her many
anti-environment views, Budd-Falen strongly opposes the Endangered Species
Act, despite the law’s success. She has referred to it as
a “sword to tear down the American economy, drive up food, energy, and housing
costs and wear down and take out rural communities and counties.”
Budd-Falen also opposes the
National Environmental Policy Act, a landmark law that requires extensive
environmental review of infrastructure and other types of potentially harmful
projects during the regulatory review process.
For decades, Budd-Falen
has been a leading voice in the the so-called county rights movement, an
offshoot of the fringe county supremacy movement that believes county
sheriffs have ultimate authority over the federal government and can choose
whether or not to enforce U.S. laws.
In 1989, Budd-Falen
represented Bundy and his neighbors in a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service over the listing of the desert tortoise as an endangered
species.
Although she believed Bundy had broken the law by refusing to pay grazing fees, Budd-Falen stated that she “totally [got] what drove [Bundy] to do what he did” and predicted “I think you’re going to see more of that because we’re not left with any choice.”
Although she believed Bundy had broken the law by refusing to pay grazing fees, Budd-Falen stated that she “totally [got] what drove [Bundy] to do what he did” and predicted “I think you’re going to see more of that because we’re not left with any choice.”
Twenty-five years later,
Budd-Falen insisted the BLM used too much force during the 2014 Bundy Ranch
standoff.
In April 2014, a group
of armed Bundy supporters confronted BLM employees who were seeking to round up
cattle that Bundy was allowing to illegally graze on public lands. The BLM
ultimately caved into the armed gang, allowing Bundy’s cattle to illegally
graze on the lands.
Like Bundy,
Budd-Falen contends “the
constitution requires the federal government to own only military and post
offices” and does not give it the right to control government-owned lands or
regulate what people do on these public lands.
The Bundy case isn’t the
only time Budd-Falen has supported efforts to restrict BLM’s authority.
At a 2003 protest
outside a BLM office in Wyoming, Budd-Falen suggested that
western ranchers are “in a war” with the BLM and “if we don’t stand up and be
counted, we’re going to lose that war.”
And in 2007, she represented a
Wyoming rancher trying to sue BLM employees under federal racketeering laws for
performing their job.
Using a law intended to combat organized crime groups, Budd-Falen attempted — unsuccessfully — to sue several low-level BLM employees for implementing longstanding laws.
Using a law intended to combat organized crime groups, Budd-Falen attempted — unsuccessfully — to sue several low-level BLM employees for implementing longstanding laws.
“If Budd-Falen had
succeeded, it could have exposed all government employees to serial litigation
for simply performing their jobs,” Greg Zimmerman, deputy director of the
Center for Western Priorities, wrote in a 2017 blog post.
“Fortunately, she and her client lost the bizarre lawsuit unanimously in front
of the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Budd-Falen has
also spoken at
events featuring constitutional sheriffs, a group associated with the Bundys
and their “county supremacy” ideology. This includes Grant County Sheriff Glenn
Palmer who became a “heroic figure”
among Bundy supporters after he sympathized with the Malheur refuge occupiers
and allegedly asked two of the standoff’s leaders to sign his “pocket constitution.”
Budd-Falen also defended ranchers
Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced in 2015 to five years in prison
after illegally burning 140 acres of public lands in Oregon, which sparked the
Malheur refuge occupation.
Earlier in her
career, Budd-Falen served three years in the Reagan administration’s
Interior Department as a special assistant to the assistant secretary for land
and minerals management. She also worked as an attorney at the Mountain States
Legal Foundation, a far-right public interest group in Denver.
Budd-Falen also
previously supported Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory’s (R) failed legislation in
2012 that demanded the federal government transfer control of much of Utah’s
public lands to the state by 2015.
She said Ivory’s
bill “could stand a chance constitutionally,” although her legal opinion was in
direct contradiction to a report supported
by 11 Western attorneys general that found that the “U.S. Supreme Court has
repeatedly ruled that the Property Clause of the Constitution gives the U.S.
government the right to own public lands.”
Budd-Falen’s views on
public lands align with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and other Trump
administration officials. Under Zinke’s leadership, the Interior
Department has emphasized the value of fossil fuel extraction and other
industry endeavors on public lands.
Accessing oil, gas, and
coal reserves, for example, were key factors in
the decisions by the Trump administration to shrink the Bears Ears
and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.