Vise tightens around Zinke

Embattled Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is finding himself with fewer defenders inside or outside the Trump administration, as one-time supporters in industry drift away and his sagging popularity in his native Montana appears to be keeping him off the campaign trail. The pileup of ethics investigations into the former Navy SEAL and congressman is not only placing Zinke in potential legal jeopardy. It’s also alienating many of the same industry groups and Trump allies who welcomed his arrival at the Interior Department just 19 months ago, according to people who requested anonymity to protect their relationships with the administration. Many of those same people are predicting that Zinke will step aside and let Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lobbyist and experienced bureaucratic infighter, fill the agency’s top slot. That would almost certainly bring no change in the Interior Department’s support for President Donald Trump's policies of loosening restrictions on drilling, fracking and mining on federal lands and waters. But it could mean fewer embarrassing headlines about lavish travel expenses, taxpayer-funded helicopter trips and personal development deals involving the chairman of Halliburton. People are assuming that there is something there and that Bernhardt is going to step into the role,” one former administration official said. One person in the oil and gas industry told POLITICO: “I think he’s a total walking disaster.”Zinke made a risky gambit in recent months, pitching himself to the White House as a potential replacement for outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley despite facing multiple investigations into his conduct, according to a source familiar with the situation. Though the president never seriously considered him as a candidate, the person said, the move caused his opponents inside the White House to start chattering about the investigations. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were among the people who opposed moving Zinke to the U.N., a former White House official told POLITICO. Spokespeople for Zinke also may have done him no favors last week when they pointed the finger at the White House and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson for a bizarre episode involving a scuttled attempt to put a political appointee in charge of Interior’s Inspector General’s Office. Even before that, the ice beneath Zinke’s feet appeared to be thinning with senior White House staff. CNN reported in March that Zinke was one of several Cabinet members called into the White House for lectures about the “optics” of their ethics flaps...MORE