Earlier this year, two key congressional Democrats reached out to the Interior Department’s inspector general with a provocative allegation: The lawmakers requested an investigation into Karen Budd-Falen, the agency’s third-highest-ranking official, who they said might have played a role in approving a lithium mine after her husband entered into a multimillion-dollar relationship with the mine’s developer.

What’s more, according to the congressional Democrats — Reps. Jared Huffman of California, who is the ranking member on the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon, the ranking member on the oversight subcommittee — Budd-Falen failed to disclose the key details, not only during her tenure in the first Trump administration but also when she returned to the president’s team last year.

The controversy didn’t generate a ton of headlines at the time, but four months later, the same official is confronting another ethics controversy. The Washington Post reported:

A top Trump appointee at the Interior Department acknowledged that she has been involved in changes to grazing policies that benefit ranching businesses like her family’s, according to a video of her remarks — a claim that some ethics experts say could violate federal law.

Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen told a Congressional Western Caucus event in December that grazing policy is part of her job, and “the thing that probably was the closest to my heart was grazing regulations,” according to a video that Senate Western Caucus Chairwoman Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) uploaded to her public YouTube page.

Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of a nonpartisan watchdog group called the Campaign for Accountability, told the Post that her organization had been monitoring Budd-Falen’s activities given her financial holdings and found the YouTube recording of her comments.

“The situation with Karen Budd-Falen seems to be quite brazen in the scheme of conflicts of interest,” Kuppersmith said. “She is, by her own admission, working on policy for grazing that will likely directly impact her own financial interests. And they’re not even trying to hide it.”

Richard Painter, formerly the chief ethics lawyer under the George W. Bush administration, added that if Budd-Falen has received federal grazing rights from her department while also creating grazing policy at the agency, “that would be a pretty slam-dunk financial conflict of interest.”

The Interior Department declined to answer the newspaper’s specific questions, though it said in a statement that Budd-Falen “has complied, and continues to comply, with any and all legal requirements, ethical standards and ethics guidelines.”

At least for now, the administration official probably won’t have to worry about any kind of congressional oversight, since Capitol Hill is led by Republicans who have entirely given up on the idea of accountability or examining potential wrongdoing on Team Trump. But a variety of congressional Democrats have already said they would start asking some key questions regarding Budd-Falen’s work if either chamber (or both of them) changes party hands in the midterm elections. Watch this space.

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