ASSOCIATED PRESS • February 16, 2022
Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a commercial development project that included a microbrewery in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement, federal investigators said Wednesday. Zinke, who is now running for Congress, also gave incorrect and incomplete information to an Interior Department ethics official who confronted him over his involvement and ordered agency staff to help him with the project in a misuse of his position. The department’s inspector general’s office – led by a Trump nominee– referred the results of the Zinke investigation to prosecutors.