An attorney who spent 18 years in the Interior Department’s legal office has quit in protest, accusing the Trump administration of an “assault on the rule of law,” according to The Guardian and Public Domain, which obtained his resignation letter.
John Murdock, a conservative Christian who started at the department in 2002, left officially on September 30. His letter faults the agency for legal shortcuts, its drive to expand fossil fuel drilling, and what he sees as disregard for environmental rules.
The turning point came in December, when Matt Giacona, acting head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, stood on stage in New Orleans to tout a Gulf of Mexico lease sale that pulled in more than $370 million from 30 bidders, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Giacona praised the administration’s environmental record in glowing terms.
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act ordered the sale, and BOEM and Interior’s lawyers decided beforehand that core environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act didn’t need to happen at the lease sale stage. Environmental groups sued. The administration counters that Congress’s mandate left it little discretion over the sale’s terms.
“I felt an ethical obligation to highlight the glaring legal flaws I saw,” Murdock wrote.
He also condemned this year’s move to carve Gulf drilling out of Endangered Species Act protections, calling it “repugnant” whether or not it’s technically legal, with the imperiled Rice’s whale at stake. Having once helped with the Deepwater Horizon cleanup, he said he didn’t want to play a part in a bigger catastrophe.
On offshore wind, Murdock argued the administration’s energy strategy has narrowed from “all of the above” to fossil fuels only, citing the shutdown of nearly finished wind projects and a payout of close to $1 billion to TotalEnergies to give up its wind leases.
He saved some of his sharpest criticism for the weekly “Inside Interior” video sent to every employee, whose tone, he said, has shifted to something like “cultish worship” of the president.
Murdock, now in Texas, said he’s giving up a steady paycheck and benefits and that his retirement picture will likely get messier, but that he’ll keep his integrity.
Giacona left in September for Halliburton, which didn’t respond to a request for comment. Murdock’s exit follows a wave of departures by veteran federal staff, with thousands leaving Interior since last year’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts.
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