Interior Department staffers are describing a Secretary Doug Burgum operation so allergic to accountability that it’s routinely destroying its own paper trail.
Three current or former officials told Politico that Interior employees have been shredding documents and relying on disappearing Signal messages — both practices that run afoul of the Federal Records Act. “They’re terrified of written records,” one former official said.
The reporting paints a picture of an agency in freefall: nearly 14% of the workforce has departed under Burgum, including several senior Senate-confirmed and career officials. Multiple ex-staffers pointed to chief of staff JoDee Hanson’s management style — described as reducing subordinates to tears — as a factor in their decisions to leave. A 20-plus-year Interior veteran, Tony Irish, characterized Burgum as combining arrogance with indifference toward career staff expertise.
The piece also ties this dysfunction to the recently botched effort to prosecute alleged vandals at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, depicting it as part of the larger mismanagement.
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