It is a truth universally acknowledged that Donald Trump firmly believes that he can do anything he wants, even if a federal court has ruled against him.
Same’s true for his underlings.
Take the case of a certain William Perry Pendley.
Pendley is a conservative activist, commentator, and government (“gummint," in the language specially created by Walt Kelly in his Pogo series) official, who has been serving as the Acting Director of Trump’s Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior.
In the Western United States, the Bureau of Land Management is in charge of no less than two hundred forty-seven million, three hundred thousand acres of public lands, accounting for one eighth of the land mass of these here United States.
Trump’s Interior Secretary, David Bernhardt, a former oil industry lobbyist and a former Denver lawyer with the powerful politically-oriented Denver law firm Brownfield Hyatt Farber Schreck, appointed Pendley as Deputy Director of the Bureau of Land Management in 2019, and he became Acting Director within a month. The position of the Director of the Bureau of Land Management is an appointment made by whoever sits in the Oval Office, and Trump nominated him to that position, but, because Pendley is controversial, Moscow Mitch’s Senate never confirmed him, and U S District Judge Brian Morris, the Chief Judge of the U S District Court for the District of Montana and a former Justice of the Supreme Court of Montana, and a no doubt proud native of Montana’s most interesting city, Butte, ruled on September 25, that Pendley served for 424 days unlawfully, and Chief Judge Morris issued an order forbidding him from continuing as Acting Bureau of Land Management Director, but NPR reported this morning that the breezy and arrogant Pendley is still running the all-important agency.
Associate solitary reporter Andrew Kurwood is our Chief Correspondent on all matters having to do with the Department of the Interior, so we reached out to him for comment on the Pendley matter.
“SR, that’s easy,” Kurwood said. “Bernhardt and Pendley were put in there by the Trumpians to make it easier for Bureau of Land Management lands to be exploited. As NPR said this morning, the mere fact that Pendley has advocated for our public lands to be privatized, is Trumpism, pure and simple, and it’s part of Republican orthodoxy as well." Kenwood was referring to Public Radio's KUNC, a Member Station of NPR, at https://www.kunc.org/2020-10-15/pendley-defends-bureau-of-land-management-job-despite-judges-ruling.
In other news, Trump’s former Chief of Staff, Marine Corps General John Kelly (Ret.) is one of a growing number of former Trump officials who are unloading on him. Kelly has told friends that Trump “is the most flawed person” he’s ever known. Kelly said “The depths of [Trump’s] dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else.” (https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/politics/donald-trump-criticism-from-former-administration-officials/index.html).