On Wednesday, the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking unreleased records of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s schedule and travel log. The group says the suit followed indications that “political appointees may be responsible for the lack of transparency,” according to Just The News.
The group says that during Haaland’s time on the House Natural Resources Committee while she served in Congress, she and her colleagues “lodged multiple complaints regarding online calendars they believed were delayed or provided insufficient detail.”
Now, her staffer who formerly worked for far-left Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the chairman of the Committee, oversees Haaland’s calendar. Protect the Public’s Trust says that “it appears the agency may be intentionally withholding” the full schedule, which is only publicly accessible in a “skeleton version.”
In July, Interior Department communications director Melissa Schwartz was asked why the agency’s website had “nothing” about Haaland’s meetings or travels.
Schwartz claimed, “I was on a call earlier this week specific to FOIA requests for her calendar and then how we put those up online.” She said, “Sometimes the data dump for FOIA. … just doesn’t look as nice as a communications professional might want it to look … We actually did have something up and then it wasn’t inclusive enough and then we took it down. Just trying to sort of navigate how much to include, whether or not people’s personally identifiable information needs to be redacted and what that looks …”
“One thing I will say is we take our 508 compliance rules very, very seriously … The secretary in her first week did two pen and pad briefings with reporters and I myself promised reporters that we would have the calendar up. I have blown through my own deadline that I committed to because it’s just taking a little bit more time in the beautiful bureaucracy we work in than I expected. It’s very much on our minds. We’re really trying to use August, perhaps slightly quieter time, to get all of this up, and get us all caught up.”
Haaland has been under intense scrutiny for her time in office as Interior Secretary, especially regarding her desire to hold a superspreader event at the Department, which would have gone against policies outlined by the Biden regime. She also held a maskless indoor wedding at the Hyatt Tamaya Resort in New Mexico that went against state health guidelines, a story exclusively broken by the Piñon Post.