Two months ago, when Donald Trump nominated Kathleen Sgamma, a professional advocate for the oil and gas industry, to run the Bureau of Land Management, no one was especially surprised. The Interior Department oversees drilling; the president wants more drilling; so it stood to reason that he’d turn to someone with extensive experience in drilling.
What was surprising, however, was the sudden demise of her nomination. The Associated Press reported:
President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land has withdrawn her nomination following revelations that she criticized the Republican president in 2021 for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The withdrawal of Kathleen Sgamma to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management was announced Thursday at the start of Sgamma’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The timing of the developments reinforced how quickly her nomination collapsed: As Sgamma’s confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin, it fell to Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who chairs the relevant committee, to announce that the president’s former choice for the position had “withdrawn from consideration.”
Sgamma issued a statement, which did not explain why she was withdrawing, and the White House did not offer an explanation except to say that the president would choose a new nominee.
But there doesn’t appear to be any great mystery here: Two days ago, an investigative group uncovered a 2021 letter in which Sgamma wrote that she was “disgusted” by Jan. 6 violence and the president’s role in “spreading misinformation” about the Capitol attack. The letter was sent to Western Energy Alliance members on Jan. 7, 2021.
Sgamma added at the time that she wished then-President-elect Joe Biden “the best of luck in his goal to return to normalcy and moderation,” despite her policy disagreements with the Democrat. Trump has demonstrated an ability to welcome into the fold former critics (see his vice president, for example), but Sgamma’s 2021 letter also acknowledged that Trump lost the 2020 race, which probably made her withdrawal inevitable. For those keeping score, this is the fifth personnel failure of the president’s second term. The first was the collapse of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s attorney general nomination. That was soon followed by Chad Chronister’s failed nomination to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, and former Rep. Dave Weldon’s failed nomination to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two weeks ago, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York learned that she was no longer Trump’s choice to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And now Sgamma has joined the small but growing club.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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