Joel Clement on Why He Quit the Dept. of the Interior

On October 4, Joel Clement, a career employee at the Department of the Interior, tendered his resignation. In the letter explaining why, he didn’t hold back, citing Secretary Ryan Zinke’s “resume of failure” and accusing him of wasting taxpayer money and betraying the American people.

Until June, Clement was in charge of the Office of Policy Analysis, where he worked primarily on the effects of climate change in Alaska. Then he was abruptly transferred to a position in the office that audits royalty payments from companies extracting oil and coal on public lands—an area well outside of his expertise. Clement concluded that the Trump Administration was trying to coerce him to leave the DOI, and he filed a public complaint on July 19, claiming that his reassignment was retaliation for his speaking out publicly about the danger of climate change.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2251961/inside-department-interior