Tag Archives: Twin Metals

Two Sets of Boundary Waters Documents: The Fallout from the Reversal

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Two sets of Boundary Waters documents arrived yesterday afternoon.

The first set of documents is the tenth supplemental production — the December production — in response to my FOIA litigation. It includes more records from Briana Collier, 411 pages dating back to 2018 and mainly to do with the fallout from the Boundary Waters reversal: attorneys at Interior prepare for litigation over the reversal and start to gather materials to respond FOIA requests (including mine). I’ve put these materials online here.

The Collier correspondence shows attorneys at Interior searching for and reviewing letters and lease files from 1966 forward to prepare for litigation in the Voyageur case, for instance. In one exchange, the litigation specialist at BLM is apparently trying to reconcile the current lease form with the historical leases. Her questions have been redacted:

This same collection of correspondence also offers a glimpse of attorneys at Interior processing multiple FOIA requests at around the same time that Solicitor Daniel Jorjani was putting the Awareness Review Policy formally in place. There appears to have been some confusion about how to run the records search and how to include custodians who had taken on new assignments, in different departments. At one point, Collier apologizes for the “mess”:

The second set of records in this release includes 126 pages of documents previously withheld until the White House and the Office of the Secretary could review them. These records are now online here. They consist mostly of regular briefings by White House Liaison Lori Mashburn — another political appointee who came to Interior via the Heritage Foundation and the Trump 2016 campaign. These briefings present roundups of news coverage, summaries of schedules and announcements, tweets by Zinke that Mashburn deems “notable,” and the occasional flattering detail — e.g, Zinke’s appearance on the History Channel program Navy Seals: Kill or Capture.

Pages 107-126 of this 126 page document present Daniel Jorjani’s email correspondence and a briefing prepared for “the Duluth trip” (Trump’s June 2018 trip to Duluth, which I wrote about here) by Mitch Leverette, Acting Eastern States Director. The part of Leverette’s memo dealing with “Federal permits, leases, and extension requests” has been fully redacted. The issue was still very much in the works:


One takeaway from these documents is that the Boundary Waters reversal — the Jorjani legal memo of December 2017 — ruled in Antofagasta’s favor but unsettled the regulatory picture for much of 2018. “Questions regarding how to interpret the original lease terms have also persisted,” notes Leverette in his memorandum; and Interior was dealing with other questions as well. An exchange in the December production shows Kevin Baker, Vice President for Legal Affairs at Twin Metals, trying to sort out some “confusion based on the recent approvals” from the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service.

Subsequent actions by Interior and USDA were intended to give Baker and executives at Twin Metals and Antofagasta the results they sought and the clarity they needed to proceed. Now, with the arrival of a new administration only weeks away, things may seem little less settled.

Read more about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

A Motion in D.D.C. and Some Updates to the Twin Metals Timeline

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A March 1, 2019 motion filed in Voyageur Outward Bound School et al. v. United States et al draws on the collection of documents I obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of the Interior. The motion asks Judge McFadden of the US District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the completion of the administrative record. This is from the declaration filed together with the motion to compel:

During the week of February 11, 2019, Plaintiffs learned of a set of 4,490 pages of documents that Louis Galdieri had obtained from the Department of the Interior in response to a January 2018 FOIA request and had published online earlier that week (Galdieri FOIA Production). Mr. Galdieri is unaffiliated with Plaintiffs. After reviewing those thousands of pages of documents, Plaintiffs identified the documents attached hereto as Exhibits A–J as particularly relevant to the issues in this case.

As it now stands, the record before the court paints an incomplete picture. The Exhibits filed together with the motion include key documents from the FOIA production that now appear in the Twin Metals timeline. These documents show Interior officials working closely with lobbyists from WilmerHale, giving short shrift to environmental advocates and setting scientific findings aside, and meeting multiple times with executives from Antofagasta, Plc and Twin Metals Minnesota.

The FOIA production also offers evidence of coordination with the US Embassy in Santiago, Chile, where the CEO of Antofagasta met with the ambassador in late April of 2017, and with the Trump White House, where the Antofagasta CEO and his entourage may have had meetings as early as May of 2017.

Overall, the documents demonstrate clearly that the review of the Twin Metals matter undertaken at the Department of Interior was an exercise in a foregone conclusion. The goal from the outset was to reverse the Obama administration and deliver for the mining company.

The attorneys for the plaintiffs called out a some documents that had escaped my noticed. These now appear on the timeline. One document was not there because I could not figure out where it should fall in the chronology: it is dated  “April XX” of 2017. It is a copy of a Memorandum for the Secretary — namely, Ryan Zinke — from the Office of the Solicitor, heavily redacted on the grounds of attorney-client privilege.

The eight page memorandum is pretty clearly the same memo, or a draft of the same memo that Kathleen Benedetto forwarded to Zinke on April 25, 2017. That memorandum was developed from a Briefing Paper that had been in the works at Interior as early as February of 2017. The memo provides Zinke with “a set of options for reversing” BLM’s decision on Twin Metals before he meets with Representatives Tom Emmer and Rick Nolan the next day . Even though the XX in the date is not a Roman numeral but a placeholder, I’ve dated it April 20th, just to assign it a place in the timeline.

AprilXXSol

That redacted document helps bring Zinke into the picture. I’ve also added an October 12th, 2017 meeting between the Office of the Solicitor meets and Twin Metals Minnesota. We know about this meeting from an October 27, 2017 email sent by Briana Collier to Karen Hawbecker and Richard McNeer of the Office of the Solicitor. She reminds them that Jack Haugrud expects the Solicitor’s office to produce “Twin Metals M-Opinion Reversal Draft” in “4-6 weeks from when we met with Twin Metals on October 12th.”

This document might help clear up some confusion I had about how many times the Solicitor’s office met with Antofagasta executives. I had counted only the May 2nd and July 25th meeting with Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada, but a March 1, 2019 letter from three House leaders — Alan Lowenthal, Raul Grijalva and Betty McCollum — to Secretaries Perdue and Bernhardt pointed to a third meeting: “Antofagasta met with Jorjani three times in the months leading up to the issuance of his Solicitor opinion in December 2017,” the letter reads. Maybe this October 12th meeting counts as the third meeting. I’ve written to McCollum’s office for clarification, but have not received a reply.

Even with all the redactions, gaps in the record, and unanswered questions, it seems pretty clear that in the Twin Metals matter the Department of the Interior was serving private interests, and not the public interest. At whose direction we still do not know; nor do we know why the matter appears to have been a priority for the new administration.

Interior has not yet provided me with all the documents I requested back in January of 2018. Maybe some fresh answers will come with the release of additional documents.

Update, 22 March 2019. One day after I posted this, on March 15th, 2019, attorneys for the defense filed a brief in opposition to the plaintiff’s March 1 motion.

Writing for the DOJ, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jean E. Williams maintains that documents obtained through FOIA are not necessarily part of the administrative record. These are merely “internal transmittal emails, deliberative documents, and privileged attorney work product” that the plaintiffs “offer…exclusively in an improper attempt to prove the subjective motivation or mental processes of the decisionmaker.” The federal government cites plenty of case law to support this point.

Further,

this Court should deny Plaintiffs’ belated motion because Plaintiffs have not met the heavy burden of overcoming the presumption of administrative regularity that attaches to an agency’s designation of the administrative record and because the this  [sic] Court’s review of any reviewable, final agency action challenged by the Complaints should be limited to consideration of whether the agencies’ stated reasons are arbitrary and capricious.

To the layperson, it would seem that the arbitrary and capricious nature of those “stated reasons” is exactly what the FOIA production suggests. The Jorjani memo appears to have been an exercise in a foregone conclusion, written from a blueprint set out in 2016 by Seth Waxman, the mining company’s attorney. There are those meetings with the CEO of Antofagasta Plc at the US Embassy in Santiago, Chile, at the Department of Interior, and at the White House. There is abundant evidence that Interior worked hand in hand with mining company representatives to reach its conclusions.

None of that should enter into determining whether the FOIA production is part of the administrative record, the federal government argues. The court should look at the emails arranging these meetings, and determine only whether they are rightly considered part of the administrative record. The emails were not themselves “considered in reaching the decisions to reinstate the leases,” they assert. Or, as they put it at the end of their brief, the emails were not “actually before the decisionmaker.”

Finally, Plaintiffs’ motion should be denied because Plaintiffs offer these documents for an impermissible purpose. Plaintiffs admit that they intend to use the documents to attempt to show Federal Defendants’ subjective intent in reaching the challenged decisions. But the law of this Circuit is clear that APA review is limited to an agency’s stated justifications, not the mental processes or subjective motivations that may underlie a decision. For this reason, this Court should deny Plaintiffs’ motion because the proposed supplement is irrelevant to the questions before the Court.

The Court is not going to guess at mental processes or motivations, but can it really come to a decision about the arbitrary and capricious nature of the Jorjani opinion without considering what the plaintiffs call “the why and the how” of the Jorjani opinion? Or without taking into account the fact that the CEO of Antofagasta himself was “actually before the decisionmaker,” several times? That is what these documents show.

Update, 23 March 2019. Yesterday, as I was writing the previous update, the Plaintiffs filed a reply to the DOJ brief.

In this latest filing, the attorneys for Voyageur et al. argue that the documents produced by Interior in response to my FOIA request cannot be dismissed on the grounds that they are just “deliberative” or covered by attorney-client privilege. The agency has already redacted these documents to protect deliberative process and preserve attorney-client privilege, and “plaintiffs only seek to include the documents as redacted.”

They also make clear that their real complaint has to do with the Department of Interior claiming that they were merely correcting an error in the M-Opinion issued by Solicitor Tompkins. “Under the banner of error correction,” Jorjani smuggled in a new policy. “The documents…are relevant to establishing whether the stated rationale was pretextual,” in which case, they would be relevant to the plaintiffs’ claim that the agency did not have the proper authority to issue the new opinion.

Finally, they take up the DOJ’s argument that the documents in question were not “before the decisionmakers.” As I mentioned yesterday, this argument essentially amounts to saying that the decisionmakers did not have the emails themselves before them as they worked. Here, the plaintiffs cite case law to the effect that “a document need not literally pass before the eyes of the final agency decision maker to be considered part of the administrative record,” as a 1996 case, Miami Nation of Indians v. Babbitt, reads. But that is not even the major flaw in DOJ’s argument, they say. 

The documents were “to and from” the decisionmakers themselves, “generated by, and circulated between” them; and “agency decisionmakers considered them directly or indirectly” in reaching their decisions. Some of the documents show decisionmakers running their work by the White House and other policymakers. Looking at the Twin Metals timeline, it is hard to deny that “influential officials responsible for domestic and international policy concerns discussed Twin Metals with the agency decisionmakers in the lead-up to the challenged decisions,” as the Plaintiffs assert here.

Still others show requests coming directly from Antofagasta Plc, and internal discussions at Interior about the meeting between CEO Arriagada and high-level officials. The DOJ has already introduced into the administrative record the April 17, 2017 letter from Ivan Arriagada to Ryan Zinke (which I discuss here). So they admit that’s relevant and part of the record. Why admit that and exclude other correspondence that shows the extent of Antofagasta’s influence over the Office of the Solicitor, its meetings with the State Department, or the Trump White House?

If I may venture a summary: this appears to be a case of high-level public officials blatantly serving the private interests of a foreign mining conglomerate, and pretending all the while to be scrupulous about the law.

Update, 8 April 2019. Today, Judge McFadden issued an order denying the Plaintiffs’ motion to admit documents produced through my January 2018 FOIA request. The court relied for its decision on the “strong presumption” that an agency has properly compiled the administrative record. So “the Court finds that the Federal Defendants have compiled the administrative record here in good faith.” This is a setback for the plaintiffs, and, for what it’s worth, a good occasion for me to think about the record I am producing here.

Read other posts about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

A New Set of Boundary Waters Documents

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In response to a Freedom of Information Act request I made back in January of 2018, the Department of Interior has released over 5,000 pages related to the Trump administration’s rollback of federal protections for the Boundary Waters. These and other documents have allowed me to put together this timeline, which tells a pretty clear story. From the very first days of the new administration, Interior Department officials and mining company lobbyists worked closely together, and with blatant disregard for science and the environment, toward a predetermined outcome that served the business interests of a foreign mining company, and not the public interest.

The latest release arrived on Friday afternoon. It’s a collection of email correspondence and attachments from Briana Collier, an attorney in the Division of Mineral Resources. These documents are now published here.

An email from Collier included in an earlier release had tipped me off to a previously undisclosed meeting at the US embassy between the CEO of Antofagasta PLC and the Carol Z. Perez, the US ambassador to Chile. Any hopes that this latest release would shed more light on that meeting, or make other equally significant disclosures, were quickly dashed when I opened the PDF. About 400 of the 650 pages included here are redacted, many of them entirely, on the basis of attorney client privilege or deliberative process. Almost all date from December of 2017, when the Office of the Solicitor at Interior was finalizing the Jorjani memo — the memo that cleared the way for Antofagasta PLC to renew its mineral leases in Superior National Forest.

In these documents, we mainly see officials crossing ts and dotting is in the memo before its release. There are some emails exchanged at the last minute regarding the first footnote in the memo, on the Weeks Act, which establishes the Secretary of Interior’s statutory authority for the disposition of minerals. The footnotes for an important section of the memo (pp. 11-13), arguing that BLM previously renewed the leases on 1966 terms, are the subject of another last minute exchange. One footnote in particular, which is number 65 in the draft under discussion (but not necessarily in the final version, given all the last minute changes) “raises issues we do not want to address.” What issues are those?

Twin Metals continues to work closely with Interior. When Bob McFarlin, Government Affairs Advisor for Twin Metals, comes to DC with Anne Williamson, Twin Metals Vice President of Environment and Sustainability. for a “quick meeting” on December 15th with Tony Tooke, the new US Forest Service Chief, he writes to see whether he might arrange a “short visit” while he’s in town with Kathleen Benedetto. Benedetto and Williamson had met — when exactly, we don’t know — during the summer of 2017. McFarlin asks that Mitch Leverette, Eastern States Acting Director, Bureau of Land Management, join them.

There is ongoing concern over coordination with the Forest Service, from the drafting of a letter announcing that BLM will no longer consider the Forest Service’s non-consent to lease renewal valid, to the very minute the memo is released. Correspondence with the Forest Service’s Kathleen Atkinson is almost entirely redacted. And Interior’s efforts to coordinate with Forest Service only add to the confusion around plans for a news release. At what appears to be the direction of David Bernhardt’s office, work was done on a “relatively short” Minnesota-only press release. Even that is eventually cancelled, and it’s decided that Interior will deal with this only “if asked.”

Before that, however, and at the request of Interior Communications, Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to the Solicitor of the Interior and another Koch veteran, forwards a “one-pager of talking points on the Twin Metals opinion” to Daniel Jorjani and Jack Haugrud for review. He has put them together “given [or with an eye to] today’s focus on critical minerals.” (Recall that “strategic minerals” were a central theme of Ivan Arriagada’s April 17, 2017 letter to Secretary Zinke as well.) In a second email circulating the talking points to Deputy Director of Communications Russell Newell, Lawkowski elaborates: “One thing you all may want to note — the Forest Service has indicated that they believe there are potentially cobalt and platinum deposits underneath Superior National Forest….Cobalt and platinum are on the list of 23 critical minerals released by USGS earlier this week.” Eureka.

As I continue to comb through this latest release, I will add more details to the Twin Metals Timeline. If something here catches your eye, let me know in the comments below, or send me an email (my Twitter handle is also my gmail address). And if you have documents that can add color or contrast or depth to the timeline, please get in touch.

You can read all my posts about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

Sonny Perdue “Broke His Word” on the Boundary Waters

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Representative Betty McCollum said last week that Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had broken his word and betrayed his responsibility to care for public lands.

She made these remarks in response to Perdue’s cancellation of the two-year environmental review of the mining withdrawal of Forest Service lands adjacent to the Boundary Waters.

McCollum called out this exchange with Perdue on May 25, 2017.


(A transcript of the exchange may be found here).

It’s interesting, and in hindsight it’s perhaps telling, that Perdue answers before US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell can. Just about five months earlier, in December of 2016, Tidwell had stated unequivocally that allowing the Twin Metals mine would likely result in acid mine drainage to the Boundary Waters and the surrounding watershed — “an unacceptable risk.” But before Tidwell has a chance to answer — and presumably walk the committee through these findings — his new boss takes it upon himself to respond.

Perdue right away reassures McCollum and other members of the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee that he and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had “already met about this,” and they had agreed that “none of us, I’m not smart enough to know what to do without the facts base and the sound science, and we are absolutely allowing [the study] to proceed.” But despite this pledge, his posturing before the committee (“the buck stops here”), and his invocation of the “Hippocratic oath: first of all, do no harm,”

Secretary Perdue broke his word, bending to political pressure from a foreign mining company and abandoning sound science to give a green light to toxic sulfide-ore mining in the watershed that feeds the BWCA. Like the President he serves, Sec. Perdue’s word cannot be trusted.

McCollum’s statement continues:

The Trump Administration’s abandonment of the Rainy River Watershed mining withdrawal study is a politically-motivated and callous betrayal of their responsibility to care for our public lands. It completely disregards the scientific evidence that sulfide-ore mining in the watershed will cause irreparable harm to the pristine wilderness of the Boundary Waters. The Trump Administration is eliminating sound science from the equation in order to ram through a destructive giveaway to their friends at a foreign-owned mining corporation.

McCollum understood back in 2017 that Perdue was “receiving pressure from the mining industry.” Along with the Department of the Interior, the Executive Office of the President, and members of the House and Senate, the new Secretary of Agriculture was already being lobbied on the Twin Metals mineral leases. Lobbying reports filed by WilmerHale indicate that an inter-agency, full court press was already underway as early as the first quarter of 2017, even earlier than agency calendars or the timeline I have put together from them indicate.

So it’s hard to credit Perdue’s representations to the House committee in May of 2017 that when he and Zinke met to discuss the Twin Metals mineral leases, they agreed that they were not the smartest guys in the room, and they should wait to have all the facts before rushing headlong into any decisions. It now appears their minds were already being made up for them.

Postscript. 15 September 2018. Some notes on the Zinke-Perdue meeting in this Twitter thread.

 

Another Look at the Twin Metals Timeline

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Rees20170502AntofagastaIn response to a FOIA request I made back in April, the Department of the Interior has released Gareth Rees’ 2017 work calendar. Rees has served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior since George W. Bush’s first term. He did not arrive with the so-called “beachhead” teams brought in by the current administration with the express mission of sabotaging and dismantling the government agencies entrusted to their care. Still, his calendar (which I’ve put up here, on DocumentCloud) adds more pieces to the puzzle.

Rees’ calendar drew my attention to a couple of meetings I hadn’t noticed before and which are now represented on the timeline. There is a June 15, 2017 meeting at Interior with a group called Jobs for Minnesotans — a front for the building trades that is currently lobbying for both the Twin Metals project near the Boundary waters and the Polymet project to the south, near Hoyt Lakes. Jobs for Minnesotans is a 501c4 “social welfare” or dark money organization of the kind I’ve written about in connection with mining projects in Michigan and Wisconsin. As a 2016 Pro Publica report suggests, these organizations are designed for those who prefer backroom deals to sunlight. 501c4s like Jobs for Minnesotans are used to channel money from private interests into public process, and coordinate localized efforts to remove environmental protections and undo regulation through regional and national networks.

A May 2, 2017 meeting with Antofagasta plc has also been added to the timeline. This meeting brought together representatives of the Chilean conglomerate with a large group of officials at the Department of the Interior just one month after Interior appears to have taken up the matter. Apparently meeting with Antofagasta was a priority. The company’s subsidiaries Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals had sued the Department of Interior in February of 2017. The complaint makes the mining companies’ position abundantly clear. And yet administration officials seem to have been anxious to sit down with the Chilean parent company and discuss its leases. Why? (It’s not likely that the same courtesy will be extended to the ten Minnesota plaintiffs now complaining that in reinstating Antofagasta’s leases the Department of Interior exceeded its lawful authority and acted in an arbitrary and capricious way.)

The first meeting with Antofagasta, in early May, appears to have set the agenda; the second meeting with Antofagasta, on July 25th, looks as if it were called to reach an agreement. The July meeting with Antofagasta includes all Interior officials present at the May 2nd meeting as well as some important decision makers: Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani, Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management Michael Nedd, and Edward Passarelli, Deputy Chief at the Natural Resources Section of the Department of Justice.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Department of Interior worked steadily and closely behind closed doors with lobbyists and mining executives to renew Antofagasta’s mineral leases in Superior National Forest. This would conform to the general pattern at Interior under Zinke’s leadership. “A deeply problematic culture of secrecy…has taken root in the Department of the Interior,” the organization Earthjustice charges, “keeping the American public in the dark about major decisions, important records, and meetings with industry that affect the lands and resources the agency holds in trust for the American people.”

In this case, the mining company ran a full court press; the public was kept almost entirely out of the process. The deed appears to have been done well before the end of summer 2017. The legal review that would result in the Jorjani Memo of December 22nd appears to have been nothing more than an exercise in a foregone conclusion — a sham.

McCollum Questions Zinke on the Boundary Waters Reversal

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This morning, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke appeared before the House Appropriations Committee at a hearing on the FY 2019 Budget.  The video below marks the moment when Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum questioned Secretary Zinke on the Boundary Waters reversal.

It begins with an exchange on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, in the course of which Zinke says reporting in the New York Times based on U.S. Department of Interior memos is not “credible.” Fake news.

McCollum then moves the discussion to the Boundary Waters reversal. Her main question, which she asks in a few different ways, is whether Deputy Solicitor Jorjani met with any stakeholders other than lobbyists for Twin Metals Minnesota before issuing his reversal memo.

Zinke’s response that this is all part of the public record is at best disingenuous, given that nearly all the information we have to date about the reversal is the result of FOIA requests; and it’s also Trumpian in its post-truthiness, since Zinke just declared a few moments earlier that reporting based on Department of Interior records is not to be trusted.

At any rate, here is the full exchange:

Twin Metals At Interior – A Timeline

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March 8, 2016 Department of Interior Solicitor Hilary Tompkins issues an ‘M Opinion’ providing the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management discretion to grant or deny Twin Metals Minnesota lease renewal application.
July 1, 2016 Seth P. Waxman of Wilmer Hale writes to Solicitor Tompkins on behalf of Twin Metals, arguing that her Opinion was arrived at erroneously and should be withdrawn. (For more on Waxman’s letter, see this post.)
September 12, 2016 Antofagasta subsidiaries Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals file a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, asserting the non-discretionary “right to successive renewals” of mineral leases in Superior National Forest.
December 14, 2016 US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell issues a decision that the Forest Service will not consent to renewal of the Twin Metals mineral leases in Superior National Forest.
December 15, 2016 After the Forest Service notifies the Bureau of Land Management that it does not consent to the renewal of Twin Metals mineral leases in Superior National Forest, the Obama administration releases Memo M-37036, denying renewal of Twin Metals leases. Tracy DC Real Estate, Inc. formed in DC by Luksic’s lawyers.
December 22, 2016 Tracy DC Real Estate Inc. purchases the Kalorama Triangle mansion at 2449 Tracy Pl NW. [For this part of the story, see this post.]
January 3, 2017 First news reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are moving into the Kalorama mansion.
January 4, 2017 Official sale date entered for the Kalorama mansion.
January 20, 2017 Reince Priebus issues the Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies.
January 25, 2017 Staff at Interior meet to discuss a correction to the Federal Register regarding the proposed two-year Superior National Forest mineral withdrawal.
January 27, 2017 Daniel Jorjani forwards a memo on the Federal Register correction to Katharine MacGregor and Kathleen Benedetto: “FYI re Twin Metals”
January 30, 2017 Acting BLM Director Jerome Perez forwards a list of proposed segregations and withdrawals in response to Katharine MacGregor’s request, “last week.”
February 2, 2017 Kristin Ball, Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management, prepares an Information/Briefing Memorandum for Katherine MacGregor, Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management. Subject: Application for Withdrawal, Superior National Forest, Minnesota
February 7, 2017 Michael Nedd of the Bureau of Land Management forwards a briefing paper “previously used to brief the DOI leadership” to staff; cc: Karen Hawbecker and Aaron G. Moody in the office of the Solicitor; “as discussed, we would appreciate you all working together to come up with an updated BP with respect to Withdrawal options.”
February 9, 2017 email, Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud, includes a “briefing paper to introduce the topic of the Twin Metals litigation to the SOL transition team.”
A paper prepared by Elena Fink of the Bureau of Land Management “options for addressing the withdrawal in Superior National Forest” begins to circulate: forwarded by Karen Mouritsen to Karen Hawbecker. Another email from Aaron G. Moody to Jack Haugrud recommends that Interior “work off of” the BLM paper.
February 21, 2017 Antofagasta subsidiaries Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals file a Supplemental and Amended Complaint against the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Agriculture, and US Forest Service charging that the Solicitor’s M-Opinion, the Forest Service’s denial of consent, and the BLM’s denial of renewal were arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law, and inflict “far-reaching” harms.
February 22, 2017 A “fire drill”: the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management has asked the Bureau of Land Management “for a brief ‘nutshell’ on the Twin Metals/Superior National Forest matter that can be given to the soon-to-be-confirmed Secretary [Ryan Zinke].” The paper will be included in Zinke’s briefing book.
February 28, 2017 Tracy DC Real Estate obtains business license for the rental at 2449 Tracy Pl. NW. The license expires on 28 February 2019. [update, 5 March 2019: it appears to have expired. For this aspect of the story, see this post.]
March 7, 2017 Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior Jim Cason meets with Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management Kristin Bail “and one of the issues they will discuss is the Superior NF withdrawal,” according to a March 6, 2017 email from BLM’s Bev Winston to DOI’s Karen Hawbecker. Winston asks specifically whether Hawbecker’s staff has “prepared anything on BLM’s options with regard to stopping the withdrawal process?”
April 6, 2017 Kathleen Benedetto: Ext. Meeting Boundary Waters [with?].
April 10, 2017 On the calendar of Michael Nedd, Acting Director of BLM: “Mining in Minnesota.” Also on the calendar of Daniel Jorjani. Other attendees: Joshua Hanson, Briana Collier, Yolando Mack-Thompson, Karen Mouritsen, Alfred Elser, Ruthie Jefferson, Timothy Spisak, Marshall Critchfield, Linda Thurn, Lonny Bagley, Jerome Perez, BLM-WO MIB RM5653 Conference Room, Jeff Brune, Mitchell Leverette, Downey Magallanes, Aaron Moody, Shannon Stewart, Karen Hawbecker, Kathleen Benedetto
April 17, 2017 Antofagasta Plc CEO Ivan Arriagada sends a letter to Secretary Ryan Zinke. “Due to decisions made in the last days of the Obama administration,” he writes, “our past and future investment” — which he values at $400 million — “now hangs in the balance.” He hopes “to discuss a viable path forward” with Zinke, and requests an in-person meeting in Washington, DC, on either May 2nd or 3rd. “Rob Lehman at Wilmer Hale will be handling the scheduling of my meetings.”
April 18, 2017 Benedetto: Ext. Mtg. Twin Metals [with? Cf. Friday 16 June].
April 19, 2017 Benedetto: Twin Metals. On the calendar of Karen Hawbecker, Associate Solicitor, Dept. of Interior.
April 20, 2017 “April XX” draft of Information Memorandum for Secretary Ryan Zinke, outlining “”a set of options for reversing” BLM’s decision on Twin Metals, prepared by the Office of the Solicitor. (On the “XX” in the date of this draft, see this post.)
April 21, 2017 email from Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud: Twin Metals “options” paper requesting feedback, “to make sure you’re ok with the approach we’ve taken.”
April 24, 2017 On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Meeting with Timothy G. Martin of Wilmer Hale, on behalf of Twin Metals Minnesota. MacGregor has a call with Jorjani scheduled immediately after this meeting.
April 25, 2017 Kathleen Benedetto forwards a briefing memo [scroll down to page 182] on Twin Metals for Secretary Ryan Zinke’s 26 April meeting with Representatives Tom Emmer and Richard Nolan.
April 26, 2017 On the calendar of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: meeting with Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN, 6th District) and Landon Zinda, legislative council; Representative Rick Nolan (DFL-MN, 6th District) and Will Mitchell, Legislative Director. A briefing by Kathy Benedetto and Kate MacGregor of the Department of Interior on the Twin Metals Leases.
April 26, 2017 Briana Collier, an attorney in the Division of Mineral Resources, forwards a briefing paper prepared for the State Department “ahead of an upcoming meeting this week between Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada and the U.S. Ambassador to Chile,” Carol Z. Perez.
April 27, 2017 Raya Treiser of WilmerHale emails Catherine Gulac at the Department of Interior confirming a May 2nd meeting between Deputy Secretary James Cason and Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada. The email includes “background materials”: a March 22, 2017 letter from WilmerHale’s Rob Lehman to Ryan Zinke; a July 1, 2016 letter from WilmerHale’s Seth Waxman to former Secretary of Interior Sally Jewel; and the July 1, 2016 Waxman letter to Solicitor Tompkins.
April 28, 2017 Benedetto Meeting with Rob Lehman, WilmerHale re: Twin Metals Minnesota. On the calendar of Gareth Rees, Executive Assistant at US Department of the Interior. There is also an entry for the same 11AM meeting with Lehman on the Deputy Secretary Conference Room calendar. Created by Deputy Secretary Catherine Gulac.
April 28 2017 Benedetto: Twin Metals briefing. On the calendar of Briana Collier. U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of the Solicitor. An email from Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud on April 27 specifies the purpose of this meeting: “to get some feedback from [Benedetto] on the options we’ve identified for reversing action on the Twin Metals decision.”
April 29 2017 On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor: Meeting with Rob Lehman, WilmerHale re: Twin Metals Minneosta.
May 2, 2017 On the calendar of Gareth Rees: Meeting with Antofagasta plc re: Twin Metals Minnesota Project. Included in this meeting: Gareth Rees, James Cason, Katharine MacGregor, Michael Anderson, Kathleen Benedetto, [Linda Thurn], Richard Cardinale, Tracie Lassiter, Kevin Haugrud, Mariagrazia Caminiti, Karen Hawbecker. According to internal email correspondence on April 28, 2017, the Antofagasta delegation includes: Ivan Arriagada, CEO, Antofagasta plc; Daniel Altikes, Executive Director, Antofagasta plc; Rob Lehman, Chair of the WilmerHale Public Policy Practice; Andy Spielman, Chair of the WilmerHale Energy and Natural Resources Practice. An April 28th email from Karen Hawbecker to Lisa Russell at the Environmental Resources Division of DOJ indicates “this same group [from Antofagasta] may also have a meeting at the White House.”*

*Update: reporting in the New York Times confirms that the group from Antofagasta met with Michael Catanzaro, who was then top advisor on energy and environment at the Trump White House.
May 3, 2017 Benedetto: Meet and Greet with Representatives of Save the Boundary Waters.
May 4, 2017 On the calendar of Ryan Zinke: In-person meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. Perdue will refer to this meeting in his 25 May appearance before the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee..
May 10, 2017 On the calendar of Sonny Perdue: phone call with Senator Al Franken to “fill him in on a mineral leasing issue in the Boundary Waters.”
May 17, 2017 Richard McNeer of the Solicitor’s office forwards to Jack Haugrud “a draft outline of an explanation for reversal of the M-Opinion” prepared by attorney Briana Collier.
May 25, 2017 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue appears before the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee. See this post for his testimony.
May 26, 2017 Ian Duckworth, Chief Operating Officer of Twin Metals Minnesota, writes to then-Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue asking “that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) cancel its application for withdrawal and, in the event the withdrawal application is not cancelled, that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) deny the USFS’s application.” He also submits a four-page legal memorandum along with this letter.
Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani call with Rachel Jacobson of WilmerHale, regarding a “DC Bar Event.”
June 1, 2017 email, Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud: The White House “has expressed interest in the Twin Metals matter and Doug Domenich [sic] wants to talk to the WH today.” Kathleen Benedetto drafts a memo for Domenech on the Twin Metals Project.
June 6, 2017 Jeff Small, Director of the House Western Caucus, writes to Abbey Fretz at USDA about Secretary Sonny Perdue’s decision to let the “process play out” when it came to the proposed mineral withdrawal: “not encouraging for investors” and gives the impression the US is “not a good place to mine and do business.” Small refers her to Timothy Martin at WilmerHale.
June 9, 2017 Benedetto: Chat w/Timothy Martin from WilmerHale, re: Twin Metals – Minnesota. On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management.
June 13, 2017 On the calendar of Daniel Jorjani: “Lease cancellation meeting.”
June 14, 2017 Jorjani meets with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale.
June 15, 2017 In a draft reply to Twin Metals COO Duckworth’s 27 May letter complaining of the proposed mineral withdrawal, Karen Hawbecker directs Duckworth to meet with Vincent De Vito, the Secretary’s Counselor for Energy Policy. USDA is cc’d on the reply.
On the calendar of Gareth Rees: meeting with Jobs for Minnesotans.
June 16, 2017 Benedetto Ext. Mtg. Twin Metals – Bob McFarlin [at that time, Vice President of Public and Government Affairs, Twin Metals Minnesota].
June 19, 2017 Meeting w/ USDA and DOI on Twin Metals Superior National Forest. On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor and on the calendar of Michael Nedd, Acting Director of BLM.
June 19, 2017 Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani forwards a press release to Jack Haugrud: “Reps. Gosar, Emmer, Nolan and Westerman Urge Rescission of 234,328-acre Mineral Withdrawal and Renewal of Leases in Minnesota.”  Haugrud sends the item to Karen Hawbecker, with the note: “FYI, in case you have not already seen it.”
June 20, 2017 On the calendar of Michael Nedd: Follow Up on Twin Metals Superior National Forest
June 22, 2017 On the calendar of Timothy Williams, Deputy Director, Intergovernmental and External Affairs: meeting with Chad Horrell of DCI, on behalf of Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters.
July 10, 2017 On the calendar of Ryan Zinke: “Minnesota Briefing.” Later that day, Zinke meets with Dayton. According to journalist Rachel Stassen-Berger , a spokesperson for Governor Mark Dayton says he and Zinke “discussed the Twin Metals project, and the Secretary expressed his support for the environmental review process established by the National Environmental Protection [sic: read, Policy] Act (NEPA)”
July 24, 2017 Bureau of Land Management produces a briefing paper on the Forest Service’s mineral withdrawal application.
July 25, 2017 All Hands on Deck for meeting with Antofagasta Plc re: Twin Metals Minnesota Project. On the calendar of Gareth Rees. Included: Kevin Haugrud, Katharine MacGregor, Michael Anderson, Karen Hawbecker, Kathleen Benedetto, James Cason, Gareth Rees, Linda Thurn, Richard Cardinale, Tracie Lassiter, Mariagrazia Caminiti, Edward Passarelli, Michael Nedd, Daniel Jorjani.
August 6, 2017 Karen Hawbecker forwards a briefing paper “about the Twin Metals litigation in preparation for a meeting” with Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt. This may or may not be the same as the “Twin Metals Potential Scenarios for Lease Renewal” paper “with comments” she and Jack Haugrud discuss in August 6 and 7 emails.
August 9, 2017 Katharine MacGregor: meeting with Chad Horrell, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters.
August 11, 2017 Twin Metals submits “comments” on the proposed mineral withdrawal of the Rainy River Watershed, Superior National Forest (as mentioned in a May 15, 2018 email from Twin Metals attorney Kevin Baker to Karen Hawbecker). These comments consist of two legal memoranda, one from Twin Metals VP of Legal Affairs and another from Twin Metals attorneys at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, arguing that the Rainy River Watershed mineral withdrawal is illegal.
August 22, 2017 Daniel Jorjani meeting on “Minnesota Project” with Michael J. Catanzaro, (White House, Executive Office of the President), Stephen Vaden (Office of General Counsel, Department of Agriculture).
August 24, 2017 Department of Interior hosts CEO Critical Minerals Roundtable
August 30, 2017 On the calendar of Vincent DeVito: Meeting with Tim Martin, WilmerHale
September 7, 2017 Internal meeting at Department of Interior on Twin Metals: Daniel Jorjani with Jack Haugrud.
September 21, 2017 Phone call: Twin Metals. On the calendar of James Cason, Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior. James Cason with Associate Solicitor John Hay; Associate Solicitor, Division of Indian Affairs Eric Shepard; Deputy Secretary Catherine Gulac; Associate Solicitor Karen Hawbecker.
September 25, 2017 On the calendar of Josh Campbell, Office of the Solicitor: call with Tim Martin and Raya Treiser of WilmerHale.
September 28, 2017 Vincent DeVito meets with Daniel Altikes, Vice-President, Antofagasta Plc, along with WilmerHale’s Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman, Permitting Counsel for the Twin Metals project at WilmerHale. cf. June 15.
October 2, 2017 Secretary Ryan Zinke, Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani (sporting the title “Regulatory Reform Officer”) host representatives of oil, gas, and mining at an event called “Cut the Red Tape: Liberating America from Bureaucracy.”
October 3, 2017 On the calendar or “daily cards” of David Bernhardt: call with Congressman Tom Emmer. “Rep to call Gareth [Rees.].”
Senator Amy Klobuchar attends a “bipartisan” dinner at the Kalorama mansion, ostensibly to discuss criminal justice reform.
October 4, 2017 Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt briefed on Twin Metals.
Bernhardt attends the National Mining Association Board of Directors meeting at Trump International Hotel.
On the calendar of Gareth Rees: Office of the Solicitor meeting on Twin Metals.(Gareth Rees will have lunch with Bernhardt two days later, on October 6.)
October 12, 2017 Office of the Solicitor meets with Twin Metals Minnesota: mentioned in an October 27, 2017 email from Briana Collier to Karen Hawbecker and Richard McNeer of the Office of the Solicitor. Jack Haugrud sets the working schedule for producing a “Twin Metals M-Opinion Reversal Draft” for “4-6 weeks from when we met with Twin Metals on October 12th.”
November 7, 2017 Briana Collier forwards the Twin Metals leases to political appointee Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to Daniel Jorjani.

Jack Haugrud writes to Briana Collier, asking for documents that show “BLM intended to incorporate the terms of the 1966 lease terms into the 2004 leases.” On this exchange, see this post.
November 15, 2017 On the calendar of Vincent Devito: meeting with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman, WilmerHale. See also: September 28, June 15.
November 17, 2017 Briana Collier is “working away on editing the Twin Metals opinion according to [Jack Haugrud’s] directions.”
November 18, 2017 Jack Haugrud to Briana Collier: “I didn’t realize until last night that Gary [Lawkowski] was working on his own draft” of the reversal. Haugrud sets out to reconcile this draft by a political appointee with the draft produced by Briana Collier.
November 27, 2017 Jack Haugrud emails attorneys at the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of DOJ a draft of the “M-Opinion that would reverse M-37036 and conclude that Twin Metals does have a non-discretionary right to a third renewal.” He asks for comments that week, as Acting Solicitor Daniel Jorjani “would like to issue the M-Opinion this week.”
December 13, 2017 Bob McFarlin, Government Affairs Advisor for Twin Metals Minnesota, writes to “Kathy” [Kathleen Benedetto, BLM]: he is coming to DC for a “quick meeting USFS Chief Tooke and would love to touch base. [Tony Tooke had succeeded Tom Tidwell on September 1, 2017.] I will be traveling with Twin Metals’ VP of Environment and Sustainability, Anne Williamson, who you met in Minnesota this past summer.” He asks that Mitch Leverette, Eastern States Acting Director, Bureau of Land Management, join them. After some back and forth, it’s decided DMR [=Division of Mineral Resources?] should represent the Office of the Solicitor at the meeting.
December 15, 2017 Bob McFarlin meets with Kathleen Benedetto: “The litigation is not expected to be the topic of conversation,” according to an email from Justin Katusak.
December 19, 2017 The US Forest Service is “again pinging BLM” out of concern over what standards of environmental review apply to the proposed mineral withdrawal in Superior National Forest.
December 20, 2017 At the request of Interior Communications, Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to the Solicitor of the Interior, forwards a “one-pager of talking points on the Twin Metals opinion” to Daniel Jorjani and Jack Haugrud for review. He has put them together “given [or with an eye to] today’s focus on critical minerals.” In a second email circulating the talking points to Deputy Director of Communications Russell Newell, he elaborates: “One thing you all may want to note — the Forest Service has indicated that they believe there are potentially cobalt and platinum deposits underneath Superior National Forest.”
December 21, 2017 Email from Russell Newell: Plans for the Minnesota-only news release requested by BLM on the forthcoming opinion are cancelled, and the Department will comment “if asked.”

Some final revisions to the M-Opinion draft: difficulties finding the correct Weeks Act citation for the paragraph about Statutory Authority (on p. 2 of the issued opinion); reworking of footnotes for the section on lease renewals (pp. 11-13) arguing that BLM renewed the leases in 1989 and 2004 under the 1966 terms. One footnote in particular — number 65 in this near-final draft — “raises issues we do not want to address.”

On the calendar of Timothy Williams: “Quick huddle” in the office of Todd Wynn, Director of the Interior Department’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs regarding Twin Metals, MIgratory Bird Treaty Act, and signing of Secretary’s Order. In attendance: Stephen Smith, Cynthia Moses-Nedd, Jason Funes, Timothy Williams, and Todd Wynn.
December 22, 2017 Principal Deputy Solicitor Jordan releases Memo M-37049, allowing Twin Metals to renew its leases of Superior National Forest lands.
3:17PM email from Jack Haugrud to Solicitor’s office: “Just got a call from Raya [B. Treiser] at Wilmer[Hale]. Twin Metals is moving today to dismiss their case against us.”
3:44PM Upon hearing that Governor Dayton issued a statement calling the reversal “shameful,” David Bernhardt sends a mocking email to Daniel Jorjani: “He should call Ken Salazar.”

How this timeline came about:

Back in March of 2018, reporting by Jimmy Tobias gave us a little more insight into the Boundary Waters reversal. (My posts on the topic are collected here.) Through a records request, Tobias obtained the calendar of Kathleen Benedetto, Special Assistant to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Described as “a fixer for the mining companies,” Benedetto now helps oversee the Bureau of Land Management. She has publicly taken the position that conservation of public lands is a barrier to “progress.”

The Benedetto calendar gave us a much fuller chronology and more detail than we previously had. Tobias identified at least six meetings or communications with mining interests on Benedetto’s calendar regarding the Twin Metals project in Superior National Forest, including the July 25th all-hands-on-deck meeting between high-ranking Interior officials and representatives of Antofagasta Plc. I subsequently learned that the group had met with Antofagasta earlier, on May 2nd, less than a month after Benedetto started meeting with mining company representatives.

When I put Benedetto’s calendar together with the Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani’s calendar, this timeline started to come into focus. Since then, I have been able to consult other calendars and received some materials in response to two FOIA requests. It is now clear that Interior was holding internal meetings about Twin Metals and the withdrawal of Superior National Forest lands in the first weeks of the new administration, and as early as February of 2017.

So there were many meetings about the Twin Metals project before Benedetto hosted a “meet and greet” with a Boundary Waters conservation group on May 3rd, 2017; and it looks as if the reversal was a done deal by the time Katharine MacGregor met with Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters’ Chad Horrell on August 9th.

At the very least, this timeline indicates that restoring Twin Metals “right of renewal” for their mineral leases in Superior National Forest was a priority at Interior from the moment the Trump administration took office.

The lobbying effort was a full court press, led by Raya Treiser, Rob Lehman, and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale. Litigation counsel for Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta plc — Daniel Volchok, Michael Hazel, and Paul Wolfson — are also from WilmerHale.

Note: I’ll continue to make updates to this timeline as DOI releases more materials in response to FOIA requests.

Read more about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

From Caval to Kalorama

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Kalorama

The Washington, D.C. mansion rented by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

We know this much. In December of 2016, just after the election, Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig bought the Kalorama Triangle mansion that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump now rent in Washington, D.C.. Just about six months later*, records show, the Department of Interior began drafting the December 22nd, 2017 memo that would reverse Obama-era protections for the Boundary Waters and renew the lease of lands in Superior National Forest held by Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta Plc, the mining conglomerate controlled by the Luksic family. Headlines have hinted at corrupt dealings, as I’ve noted in previous posts, but no hard evidence has come to light.

Maybe it’s all just a happy coincidence of the kind that frequently befalls the world of billionaires, mansions, and yachts. In any case, Andronico Luksic Craig, Jared and Ivanka’s landlord, is clearly a master of such coincidences. Journalist Horacio Brum dubs him “el gran titiritero de Chile,” the great puppetmaster of Chile. He is “a man who does not need to do politics,” writes Brum, “because he makes politicians.” The role Andronico Luksic Craig played in the scandal known in Chile as “el Caso Caval” — The Caval Affair — is illustrative.

The Caval Affair involved a $10 million loan for a shady real estate scheme undertaken in late 2013 by Natalia Compagnon, the daughter-in-law of Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, and 50 percent owner of a company called Sociedad Exportadora y de Gestión Caval Limitada. El Caso Caval was a drawn out and complicated affair, and charges of corruption and influence peddling would dog Compagnon and the Bachelet family for years.** Just one feature of the scandal needs to concern us at the moment, and that’s the timing of the loan itself.

In the months immediately preceding Bachelet’s election, Compagnon had been trying to secure a line of credit for her company to purchase three plots of land in Machalí, in the O’Higgins Region in central Chile. Compagnon and her husband, Sebastian Davalos Michelet, met with the Vice President of Banco de Chile to discuss the project on November 6th, 2013. This was about ten days before the elections, which were scheduled for November 17th. The loan was approved on December 16th, 2013, just a month after Michelle Bachelet was elected to the presidency. The Vice President of the Banco de Chile who made these timely financial arrangements for the daughter-in-law of the new president elect was none other than Andronico Luksic Craig.

This time-lapse illustration produced for the news organization 24 Horas lays out the whole scandal in less than three minutes. Even if your Spanish is rusty, you can follow the story. Luksic first appears around 1:26.

The pattern looks familiar. When questioned about the loan, Luksic Craig at first denied meeting the young couple more than once. (This is classic Luksic, who claims never to have met his first family tenants, and only to have said hello to Trump himself once, at a Patriots’ football game in 2012.) Only later did he admit to various meetings and contacts between him and Compagnon, including one the day after Bachelet won the election. As the scandal grew, Andronico Luksic Craig managed to retreat back into the shadows and to keep himself and the Luksic family out of the headlines.

So far, the almost daily revelations of Jared Kushner’s far-flung attempts to bail out his family’s foundering real estate empire have not turned up anything that connects Kushner’s business troubles to Chile’s Grupo Luksic or the Luksic family. But it would not be terribly surprising to learn that there is more to the Kushner story and that Kalorama mansion than Luksic Craig claims. The president’s son-in-law is a quo looking for a quid, and when it comes to making that sort of delicate arrangement, Andronico Luksic Craig appears to be a real pro.

*Since writing this post, I have reviewed documents obtained through FOIA request that show the Department of the Interior working on the reversal of Obama administration protections for the Boundary Waters as early as February, 2017, just weeks after the inauguration.

**The affair assumed such importance in Chile that it derailed the Bachelet constitutional reform project, notes political scientist Claudia Heiss: “La amplia agenda reformista del segundo gobierno de la Presidente Bachelet enfrentó una serie de dificultades, lo que sumado al denominando ‘caso Caval,’ terminó relegando la propuesta de cambio constitucional al segundo plano.” (¿Por Que Necesitamos Una Nueva Constitución?, p. 48)

Another Note on the Boundary Waters Reversal

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Jorjani Calendar

A 25 July 2017 entry from Daniel Jorjani’s calendar shows a meeting with Antofagasta Plc on the Twin Metals project.

One point I hoped to get across in Monday’s post about the Boundary Waters reversal has to do with journalism, or, more broadly, with storytelling. Just to highlight: scandal-mongering that generates clicks doesn’t necessarily get at the more prosaic and more complex truth of the story, and may end up doing a disservice. In the case of the Boundary Waters reversal, it is tempting to focus on the story of Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig and his Washington, D.C. tenants, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Was Luksic Craig’s purchase of the mansion where Jared and Ivanka now live an opening bid? Was the reversal connected to the rental?

This story of the rich and famous still merits investigating, but it carries with it a whole set of ideas — exaggerated and somewhat cartoonish ideas — of what corruption looks like: foreign billionaires, mansions, nepotism, winks and nods (remember what Luksic Craig said about meeting Trump at the Patriots’ game: “lo saludé.” “I said ‘hi’”).  All of those elements are certainly in play here, and they are part of what makes this administration appear so unabashedly corrupt and downright villainous.

At the same time, the story of Luksic Craig and his D.C. tenants could turn out to be a red herring, or what nowadays people call a nothingburger or fake news. Besides, there’s another, more immediately credible story that’s just there for the telling. What it lacks in tabloid glamour it makes up for with evidence. It unfolds among the banalities of meeting rooms, conference calls, memos, and after work events. This is the story Jimmy Tobias pursues in an excellent piece in the Pacific Standard, which I had not read before writing my post (and which, after reading, I linked to in a postscript).

Tobias beat me to the punch on the FOIA request, and obtained Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani’s calendar from May through December of 2017. He identifies two meetings about the Twin Metals project. The first is on June 14, 2017, with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale, the law and lobbying firm, on behalf of Antofagasta Plc.

Spielman is the Chair of WilmerHale’s Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Practice, and his name appears on the calendar heading, so we know that this is a high priority matter for the lobbying firm and presumably for the Department of Interior. And Treiser comes directly from the Department of the Interior, where she served under President Obama. She helped to “streamline” permitting on large infrastructure projects, and worked on the reform of offshore drilling regulations and energy development in Alaska. Now, as her biography on the WilmerHale site informs us, she has “successfully leveraged her substantive knowledge and insight into government processes.”

The second meeting is directly with Antofagasta Plc: the Chilean mining company comes to the Department of Interior to discuss its Minnesota claim, and it appears the Department rolls out the red carpet. WilmerHale had done its work. In addition to Principal Deputy Solicitor Jorjani, thirteen administration officials are in attendance, representing the highest reaches of the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. As Tobias notes, no conservation groups were invited to discuss the reversal with the Department of Interior. This was a conversation for insiders only.

At the center of this story is not a mansion, but a revolving door (and if you are not familiar with Bill Moyers’ short video essay on the subject, you should be). This feature of the story becomes even more apparent when we look at a couple of other meetings on Deputy Solicitor Jorjani’s calendar that Tobias didn’t flag but are connected with the Boundary Waters reversal. One is a Friday, May 26 call with Rachel Jacobson of WilmerHale, regarding a “DC Bar Event”; this call or this event might well have provided an opportunity to tee up the Twin Metals issue. It is the first contact WilmerHale makes with Principal Deputy Solicitor Jorjani— and who should they choose for that task but Jacobson, who held Jorjani’s job of Principal Deputy Solicitor under the Obama administration.

Then on Thursday, September 7th, when work on the reversal memo is presumably well underway, there is an internal meeting on Twin Metals: Jorjani with Jack Haugrud, who was Acting Secretary of the Interior until Zinke’s appointment, and Joshua Campbell, an Advisor to the Office of the Solicitor. Campbell is profiled here, on Western Values Project “Department of Influence” site, documenting the revolving door between special interests and the Department of Interior.

In these meetings, the public interest does not even come into play.

Postscript: Today, as I was writing this post, the Washington Post reported that the Forest Service will cancel a planned environmental impact study and instead conduct an abbreviated review of the Obama-era proposal to withdraw the Superior National Forest lands near the Boundary Waters from minerals exploration for up to 20 years. The story also appears in the Star Tribune. Things are moving fast now, and pressure is mounting.

Is Corruption at Interior Putting the Boundary Waters At Risk?

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On the afternoon of Friday, December 22nd, with Congress in recess and most Americans already starting their holiday celebrations, the Department of the Interior issued a 19-page legal memorandum reversing hard-won, eleventh-hour Obama-era protections for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Signed by Interior’s Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani, Memo M-37049 allows Twin Metals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta Plc, to renew its leases of Superior National Forest lands where it proposes to mine copper, nickel, and other minerals for the next 100 years.

Even one year of mining would scar the land, destroy wetlands, wreck the forest and fill it with industrial noise, and pollute the water. And this kind of mining — sulfide mining — always risks major environmental catastrophe, long after a mine is closed and the land reclaimed. After a brief reprieve, the Twin Metals project is again threatening this unique public wilderness area, along with the thriving tourist and outdoor economy that has grown up around it.

The reversal was immediately met with allegations of corrupt dealing. In a statement calling the move by Interior “shameful,” Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton cried foul.

A December 22nd headline in the Wall Street Journal offered what appeared to be a straightforward explanation: cronyism. “Trump Administration to Grant Mining Leases That Will Benefit Landlord of President’s Daughter Ivanka Trump.” But Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig, whose family controls Antofagasta Plc, and who only after Trump’s election purchased the Washington, D.C. mansion Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner rent for $15,000 a month, claims never to have met his tenants, and says he met Donald Trump only once, at a New England Patriots game.

It’s unclear whether Luksic Craig’s denials can be taken at face value and whether they are enough to dispel the notion that the reversal was made directly to benefit Antofagasta or the Luksic family. What prompted the action? Who directed it? Who contributed to the memo, and who reviewed it? What conversations did Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Deputy Solicitor Jorjani, and other administrators have about the reversal, and with whom?

The public deserves clear answers to these questions, and last week, I submitted a FOIA request to the Solicitor’s Office at the Department of the Interior, to see if I might gain some insight into the process behind Memo M-37049. At the same time, it’s worth noting that these are not the only questions worth asking. Luksic Craig and his Washington, DC mansion may make good headlines, tabloid fodder, and Twitter snark, and there is no ignoring the whiff of impropriety about his real-estate dealings with the president’s daughter and son-in-law, who also happen to be senior White House advisors. But that’s not the whole story here. A scandal involving Luksic-Craig and his tenants, or some direct dirty dealing between Antofagasta and Interior, might eventually come to light, but the prospect of such a scandal might also serve to distract us from other, large-scale corruption that continues to put the Boundary Waters — and other public lands and waters — at serious risk.

Put the reversal in context. Consider, for example, the Executive Order, entitled “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals,” that was issued just two days before the Boundary Waters reversal, and which, like the Interior memo, sets the stage for exploitation of mineral resources on public lands. The EO appeared to be the policy outcome of a U.S. Geological Survey of the country’s critical minerals resources published on December 19th; but Trump’s December 20th order was years, not one day, in the making.

The EO revives Obama-era legislative battles over so-called strategic and critical minerals and declares victory by executive fiat. Back in 2013, pro-mining measures introduced in both the House (HR 761) and the Senate (S 1600) promised to “streamline” the permitting process for multinational companies mining on federal lands, like Superior National Forest. The Obama administration opposed them on the grounds that they would allow mining companies to circumvent environmental review. Proponents of HR 761 called it cutting red tape; the resolution actually tried to shut the public out of the process. It touted jobs, but, as critics pointed out, provided no real strategy for creating them; and it hawked anti-Chinese hysteria of the kind that candidate Trump regularly advanced. (Tellingly, House Republicans rejected a motion that would have barred export to China of strategic and critical minerals produced under the HR 761 permit, in tacit acknowledgment that China drives global demand for copper and nickel.) Coming just two days after this EO, the Boundary Waters reversal looks less like a one-off favor to a Chilean billionaire, and more like a coordinated move in a broader campaign.

This subversion of public process is not just the dirty dealing of a few bad actors. It’s also the consequence of weakened institutions; and institutional sabotage — or what Steve Bannon pretentiously called the deconstruction of the administrative state — is the precursor to large-scale corruption. Scott Pruitt might still be the poster boy for putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, but Ryan Zinke appears to be pursuing a similar brief at Interior. Though his bungling of the offshore drilling announcement made him appear incompetent, he is making big changes to favor big mining. The Secretary has made it one of his agency’s top ten priorities to “ensure access to mineral resources” and committed to minimizing “conservation objectives” that interfere with extractive industrial development. His plan to shrink Bears Ears followed a map drawn by a uranium mining company. At Grand Staircase-Escalante and Gold Butte National Monuments, Zinke has virtually surrendered vast swaths of public lands to extractive industry.

The Boundary Waters reversal, too, looks like the work of institutional saboteurs. It settles a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior by conceding that the government should not have discretion over public lands when commercial interests are at stake. Its author, Deputy Solicitor Jorjani, did a brief stint at Interior during George W. Bush’s second term, but it was his high profile job as Executive Director of the Koch Institute that distinguished him as the right man for Ryan Zinke’s Interior. As Polluter Watch, a project of Greenpeace, notes, Jorjani was the Koch Institute’s very first hire, and among the five most highly compensated employees at the Charles Koch Foundation. Now, along with Scott Cameron and Benjamin Keel, Daniel Jorjani works with the team at Interior charged with “reviewing rules their previous employers tried to weaken or kill,” according to reporting by the New York Times and Pro Publica. Similar deregulation teams, “connected to private sector groups that interacted with or were regulated by their current agencies,” were formed at all administrative agencies. The teams put public institutions at the service of powerful patrons, subordinating public protections to private interests.

This capture and sabotage of government agencies compounds and multiplies risk, removing public safeguards and compromising appointed guardians. In the case of the Boundary Waters, the risk of irreversible damage and environmental catastrophe would extend far beyond the mining location, because mining in Superior National Forest would also significantly intensify the cumulative effects of the recent boom in leasing, exploration, and drilling throughout the Lake Superior watershed.

All around the greatest of the Great Lakes, the industrial footprint of sulfide mining operations is expanding rapidly. Just to the southwest of the Boundary Waters, for example, Polymet, a company that has never operated a mine before, proposes building an open pit copper and nickel mine that will require water treatment and tailings dam maintenance “in perpetuity” — that means forever. Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt is dismantling federal rules requiring hardrock mining companies to take financial responsibility for cleanup.

State regulatory agencies are poorly equipped to oversee these new projects. They often fail to give the public a meaningful voice in permitting, or obtain the required prior consent from the region’s Indigenous nations. For their part, many state politicians are racing to deregulate, or at least accommodate, the mining companies. Just this past October, Wisconsin republicans repealed the state’s Prove it First law, which required copper, nickel and gold miners to prove that they could operate and close a sulfide mine without producing acid mine drainage. (They never proved it.) In Michigan, where Canadian mining companies are moving aggressively into the Upper Peninsula, State Senator Tom Casperson has just proposed giving mining companies and other representatives of industry “disproportionate clout” in the review of environmental rules.

Obviously this all goes way beyond doling out favors to billionaire friends or cronies at Mar-A-Lago, and it didn’t start when the Trumps came to town. Until it is called out, voted out, and rooted out, corruption at this scale – coordinated, institutionalized, systemic – will make a mockery of rule-making and oversight, and put our public lands, as well as our public life, at risk.

Postscript: This January 10th article by Jimmy Tobias in the Pacific Standard takes a careful look at Daniel Jorjani’s calendar, which was obtained through a records request, and identifies two meetings with representatives of the Twin Metals mining project: a June 14, 2017 meeting with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale on behalf of Twin Metals, and a July 25th meeting with Antofagasta Plc. I discuss these meetings in this follow up post.

Read more posts about the Boundary Waters reversal here.