The White House has withdrawn its nomination for Kathleen Sgamma to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, just days after her opinion on the Jan. 6 riots resurfaced online.
The news came right before her confirmation hearing was about to begin Thursday, AP News reported.
Sgamma’s withdrawal came two days after revelations that she was critical of the president for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
“I am disgusted by the violence witnessed yesterday and President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it,” Sgamma reportedly wrote, according to the watchdog journalism project, Documented.
Sgamma, who heads a Denver-based oil and gas industry trade group called the Western Energy Alliance, shared her condemnation via a memo to members of the group the day after the attack.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee said he had only learned about the withdrawal Thursday morning before her hearing was set to begin.
On Thursday, she addressed the withdrawal but didn’t share why she was stepping back.
“It was an honor to be nominated by President Trump as Director of the Bureau of Land Management, but unfortunately, at this time I need to withdraw my nomination,” she said in a statement shared on LinkedIn. “I will continue to support President Trump and fight for his agenda to Unleash American Energy in the private sector.”
David Bernhardt, who led the Interior Department during Trump’s first term, suggested on X that the recently surfaced memo was why her nomination had been pulled.
“Sad,” Mr. Bernhardt wrote on Thursday with a link to the article about Sgamma’s memo. “Self-inflicted.”
Other environmental activists who opposed Sgamma for the position seemed to let out a sigh of relief, with many taking to social media to express their jubilation at the news.
“Good riddance to Sgamma, whose withdrawal is good news for America’s public lands and imperiled animals,” Taylor McKinnon, the Southwest director of the Center for Biological Diversity, told the New York Times.
He added: “There’s no doubt that Trump’s next nominee will also be a poisonous threat to our wildlife and wild places, but this speed bump gives senators a chance to ponder whether they really want to feed America’s public lands and monuments into the snapping jaws of the fracking and mining industries.”
Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of an environmental nonprofit organization called the Center for Western Priorities, has been critical of Sgamma for not publicly sharing a list of members of the Western Energy Alliance.
“It is ironic, and maybe fitting, if maybe her lack of candor and secrecy is what ultimately did her nomination in with the White House,” Weiss told the Times.
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