Susan Walsh/AP Photo
Lanny Davis talks with reporters on Capitol Hill on Feb. 21, 2019.
In a remarkable press conference on Thursday, Bill Clinton’s former lawyer Lanny Davis demanded that the House Natural Resources Committee hold a public hearing featuring him, so he could rebut the committee’s criminal referral of his client to the Justice Department on a bribery charge. Davis called the referral, made by House Natural Resources Committee chair Rep. Raúl Grijalva and oversight subcommittee chair Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), “false and misleading.”
Davis’s client, Arizona developer Mike Ingram, was accused by the committee of donating or helping to bundle $241,600 in donations to Trump’s campaign in 2017, just weeks before obtaining a federal environmental permit for a 28,000-unit housing and commercial development in the city of Benson, Arizona. Prior to the donations, Ingram had emailed the personal account of Trump’s then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and had breakfast with his top deputy David Bernhardt, who would later become Interior Secretary himself.
Under what he described to the Arizona Daily Star as direct pressure from an Interior Department attorney, Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) field supervisor Steve Spangle reversed the agency’s longstanding position to hold formal consultations under the Endangered Species Act and review the development for potential harms to wildlife. Spangle said that the attorney told him that “a high-level politico” believed his stance was wrong, and that he would be “wise to reconsider it.”
Davis dismissed the matter as mere innuendo, saying there was no correlation between Ingram’s personal lobbying, the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to Trump’s re-election, and the sudden change to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s position. “Just because two events occur doesn’t mean the first event influenced or caused the second event,” Davis insisted, likening the situation to the Clinton “Chinagate” scandal, where donations from Chinese nationals were allegedly intended to influence political decision-making. He also associated it with Republicans’ badgering of Hillary Clinton over Benghazi.
It was a reminder of how old Washington hands can pop up virtually anywhere. When not appearing on cable news, Davis has lobbied for or represented the government of Pakistan, the backers of a government coup in Honduras, the notoriously brutal dictatorship of Equatorial Guinea, the eventually deposed government of Ivory Coast, a Libyan military commander, a Ukrainian oligarch with Kremlin ties who helped investigate the Hunter Biden case, the for-profit college industry, the parent company of the National Enquirer, Harvey Weinstein (briefly), a host of businesses from Starbucks to Whole Foods, the firm that dominates the market for fat-based additives to baby formula, Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky scandal, and the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, while it was trying to keep its name.
Now he has reappeared on behalf of a Trump-supporting developer, while continuing to stress his credentials as a loyal Democrat. “I am asking for an opportunity to respond, what harm is there in doing so in public?” Davis asked.
The Natural Resources committee and the oversight subcommittee were not contacted before Davis’s remarks. In response, Rep. Grijalva said in a statement: “The question before the Committee was whether sufficient evidence exists of potentially criminal behavior that further investigation by the Justice Department is warranted. The Committee determined that it did. It is my hope Mr. Ingram will cooperate fully with DOJ.”
The facts of the case presented by the committee are reasonably clear. In 2004, a company named Whetstone applied to build the large development in Arizona near the San Pedro River, which is on the verge of disappearing thanks to groundwater pumping and ill-planned nearby construction. This required a Clean Water Act permit, as breaking ground would ultimately spill material into the river. The Army Corps of Engineers issued the permit in 2006, but the project was on hold for eight years, until Whetstone sold the land to El Dorado, which is Ingram’s company.
Because the development, now called the Villages at Vigneto, grew by 4,100 acres in size, and two species in the area were newly listed as endangered, the Fish and Wildlife Service renewed concerns they had going back to 2004, that there should be consultations and analysis under the Endangered Species Act for any effects on the habitat. (“This is about two birds and a snake,” Davis said.) The permit was suspended in October 2016, and the Army Corps briefly agreed to a formal consultation.
But the Army Corps changed its view in May 2017, opting for a less stringent standard. This made FWS and the Department of the Interior holdouts to Ingram getting his permit. As the stalemate continued, Ingram was emailing Zinke and others in Interior about the issue, stressing the “need for high level action.” On August 18, Ingram had breakfast with Bernhardt in Billings, Montana, a meeting that was not found on Bernhardt’s official calendar.
Less than two weeks later, on August 31, Bernhardt held a meeting with Peg Romanik from Interior’s Office of the Solicitor. That same day, Romanik called Spangle, the FWS field supervisor, and told him to change his decision on the Vigneto project. These calls continued for the next month.
By October 6, the Army Corps published a re-evaluation of the permit, Bernhardt met with Romanik, and Ingram gave $10,000 in an off-cycle donation to the Trump Victory Fund, which would eventually be used for a presidential race three years from that date. Over several days, 12 other Arizona businessmen gave large donations to the Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee, many of them with ties to Ingram. Within three weeks, FWS formally reversed its position (in a letter drafted by Interior officials), and the permit was eventually granted to Ingram.
Davis’s rebuttal highlighted five “facts” that he says were omitted from the committee’s report, even though the majority of them were not omitted.
First, he said that the Obama administration allowed the permit to stand for seven years. But that was a time before the scope of the project and the status of endangered species changed. I relayed this to Davis and he called it a “fair question,” but said that after El Dorado took over the project, someone could have “taken a look at it.” Of course, they did, and there are several examples of that review in the committee report; that’s why the permit was revoked in 2016. (Davis chalks that up to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups, not any review.)
Second, Davis noted that Ingram attached a “memorandum of law and facts” with his communications with senior Interior officials, and asked that the decision on the permit be made “on the merits.” This attachment is in the report, but Davis says it was “casually mentioned.”
Third, he said that the Army Corps decided in May 2017 that the project would not “adversely affect” the endangered species. Sure, but that’s not the issue regarding the potential bribe, the sticking point was always FWS’s opposition, not the Army Corps. This decision from the Army Corps, by the way, is also in the report.
Davis whipsaws from elevating Humphrey as a model civil servant who backed up the position his client wanted to accusing him of being a craven sellout two years later.
Fourth and fifth, Davis jumped ahead to two years later, after public revelations about Spangle, the FWS supervisor, being forced to reverse his position. The Army Corps wrote to Spangle’s successor, Jeffrey Humphrey, and asked for a review of the decision. Humphrey, who Davis praised as a nonpartisan, unbiased official, said in June 2019 that no problem was found. (This was also in the committee’s report, though Davis said it was “passed over quickly.”)
In the same breath of praising Humphrey for his review that backed up the FWS reversal, he condemned him for retracting his opinion in 2021 in a “cryptic, one-page letter.” Davis wondered why Humphrey wasn’t questioned for his links with environmental groups.
This was truly bizarre. Here Davis whipsaws from elevating Humphrey as a model civil servant who backed up the position his client wanted to accusing him of being a craven sellout two years later when his opinion changed. I asked Davis about this, how he was using the same person as a character witness and a tool of environmental interests simultaneously. “I’m not suggesting that he’s political, I’m being as consistent as I can be,” Davis replied. “I’m looking at the committee being selective in its interest.”
In other words, Davis was engaged in what has become known as the “Chewbacca defense,” the lawyer’s practice of making unrelated or tangential arguments in an effort to muddy the facts of a case. Claiming that the committee omitted facts (which they did not omit) that aren’t germane to the core finding of pressure campaign to reverse FWS, including the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by the developer in question and his associates around the same time, maybe isn’t quite the same as saying O.J. Simpson must be acquitted if Chewbacca lives on Endor instead of his home planet of Kashyyyk. But it definitely has that vibe.
The sadder part of this is that Davis’s plea to be heard in a public setting was rejected by the committee, thus denying America the opportunity to see Lanny Davis questioned by Katie Porter.
