John Murdock, an 18-year veteran attorney in the US Department of the Interior, resigned effective September 30, saying he was leaving because of “a deeply troubling assault on the rule of the law” at the agency. Murdock, a self-described conservative Christian who began in the department’s legal office in 2002, sent a resignation letter earlier this year that the Guardian and Public Domain obtained. He cited “glaring legal flaws” he witnessed under the Trump administration and named concerns about offshore oil and gas drilling and an aggressive push to expand fossil fuels that he said flouted environmental regulation. Murdock singled out a December incident involving Matt Giacona, acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who announced results of a Gulf of Mexico lease sale onstage in New Orleans after bids from 30 companies including BP, Chevron and Shell totaled more than $370 million. Murdock noted that BOEM and the Interior Department’s legal office determined NEPA, provisions of the Endangered Species Act, and other safeguards “are not applicable at the lease sale stage” of the BBG1 sale, a decision that environmental groups promptly sued to challenge. He said he hopes his departure, one of many amid an exodus of longtime federal workers and scientists, might help preserve the rule of law and that he is willing to share his story to that end.
