“Zinke has been a shameless handmaiden for the special interests. His staggering ethical abuses have delivered a serious and lasting blow to America’s public lands, environment, clean air and clean water."

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke violated ethics obligations in his land dealings with a Halliburton executive, the Interior Department’s internal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.

The report from the department’s inspector general confirms a series of issues POLITICO brought to light in 2018 during Zinke’s tenure as former President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary. These issues include Zinke’s attempts to aid Halliburton’s then-chair David Lesar and other developers in creating a commercial development known as 95 Karrow on land adjacent to a vacant lot in Montana that Zinke controlled through a family-run nonprofit foundation, a deal that would have led to Zinke potentially running a microbrewery on the site.

The Interior Department’s internal watchdog said former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lied to investigators who were probing whether he wrongly blocked two native tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut in 2017 — and that he pressed the office to postpone Wednesday’s report until after the November election that he is hoping will return him to Congress.

The results of the inspector general’s investigation, which began after POLITICO reported lobbyists and Nevada lawmakers pressured Zinke to reject the casino despite an approval recommendation from agency analysts, comes as Zinke is running for a Montana congressional seat. And it follows an IG report in February that found Zinke had also not been honest in explaining his actions relating to a personal real estate deal he was negotiating while head of Interior with the then-chairman of oilfield services company Halliburton.

The Pentagon has joined the Department of Homeland Security in destroying potential evidence related to the January 6 Capitol attack. Open government organization American Oversight posted court records related to its FOIA lawsuit for DoD January 6 records on its website, and the records indicate that the Pentagon “wiped” government-issued phones for senior officials that were in charge of mobilizing the National Guard’s response to the insurrection. The Washington Post reports that the erasure impacts the phone records of numerous senior officials, including then-acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.

The court records indicate that the erasure is in keeping with DoD and Army policy for employees who have left the agency. An investigation of the Pentagon’s records retention schedules will help verify this claim, which, if true, is an egregious oversight that may impact the January 6 committee’s investigation. It would also put further pressure on the National Archives and Records Administration to do a more thorough job vetting agency records retention schedules.

Trump’s actual speech was rambling, and while he spent a trivial amount of time acknowledging the service of the CIA employees, he never acknowledged the sacrifice the wall represented. Instead, he chose to try to convince a group of highly intelligent people that he didn’t say what he is on camera as saying. He talked about how unfairly the press treated him. He complained about underreporting of the inauguration attendance.

This is essentially the equivalent of lighting a cigarette off the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.