“He mentioned he advised the EPA senior official, ‘Please bear in mind [family member 1 is] really making use of for a job at EPA,’” the IG report
“He mentioned he advised the EPA senior official, ‘Please bear in mind [family member 1 is] really making use of for a job at EPA,’” the IG report states. “Domenech described it as an ungainly second for him and mentioned that at one level he ‘pulled [the EPA senior official] apart and mentioned, ‘Hey, I actually apologize. I didn’t set this up.’”
After the live performance, Domenech used his official Inside electronic mail account to hunt out the EPA official’s contact data. The following morning he used the identical electronic mail account to ship one of many member of the family’s wedding ceremony enterprise data to the EPA official together with the message, “Let me know if we will ever be of service.”
Over the subsequent a number of weeks, Domenech and the EPA official repeatedly exchanged emails concerning the progress the opposite member of the family’s software was making. The EPA ultimately employed the individual. The EPA official who Domenech communicated with didn’t reply to the IG workplace’s questions and “has since left the EPA,” the report states.
Inside downplayed the priority over the newest IG findings, saying Domenech’s communications with the EPA occurred in 2017 earlier than the division added extra officers to its ethics workers.
“The underlying occasions relating to Mr. Domenech occurred in 2017 earlier than the Division initiated an unprecedented effort to put money into constructing a tradition of moral compliance and dramatically increasing the Division of the Inside’s Ethics Workplace Program, which has resulted in tripling the variety of profession ethics officers inside the Division,” mentioned division spokesperson Nicholas Goodwin mentioned.
“Mr. Domenech has obtained extra ethics steering and ethics coaching, and the Division considers the matter resolved,” Goodwin added.
EPA didn’t instantly present remark.
After the newest discovering, Home Pure Sources Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) referred to as for Inside Secretary David Bernhardt to fireplace Domenech.
“With regards to selling ethics and stopping conflicts of curiosity, this administration has put up nothing however phrases, and at this level the harm to the Inside Division’s popularity is mounting by the day,” Grijalva mentioned in an announcement Friday. “Trump’s management group has created a tradition of ignoring corruption as a substitute of holding anybody accountable for repeated failures, and the American persons are bored with it. Firing Mr. Domenech is the one severe plan of action at this level — one other spherical of ethics coaching is clearly only a waste of time, because it hasn’t sunk in by now.”