Interior Department staffers are describing a Secretary Doug Burgum operation so allergic to accountability that it’s routinely destroying its own paper trail.
Three current or former officials told Politico that Interior employees have been shredding documents and relying on disappearing Signal messages — both practices that run afoul of the Federal Records Act. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said.
The reporting paints a picture of an agency in freefall: nearly 14% of the workforce has departed under Burgum, including several senior Senate-confirmed and career officials. Multiple ex-staffers pointed to chief of staff JoDee Hanson’s management style — described as reducing subordinates to tears — as a factor in their decisions to leave. A 20-plus-year Interior veteran, Tony Irish, characterized Burgum as combining arrogance with indifference toward career staff expertise.
The piece also ties this dysfunction to the recently botched effort to prosecute alleged vandals at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, depicting it as part of the larger mismanagement.
Burgum has continued defending the vandalism narrative, even as Pirro publicly accused him — during a tense, hour-long Oval Office session with Trump on Monday — of dodging blame by hiding the true story behind the botched repairs, per the New York Times.
Separately, Interior official Karen Budd-Falen is facing her own scrutiny. During the first Trump administration, her husband struck a $3.5 million water rights arrangement in Nevada involving his ranch and a lithium mining company that had federal approvals pending before Interior — a financial benefit she never disclosed. Now back at Interior since early 2025, she’s been shaping grazing and land-management policy despite owning several ranching operations in Wyoming and Nevada, each worth over $1 million, and holding BLM grazing permits.
The dysfunction Politico notes is actually throughout the Trump administration, starting with the President. Just work your way down from there, and you’ll see dysfunction and chaos every step of the way.