Trump’s pick to lead Bureau of Land Management withdraws nomination as Jan. 6 criticism surfaces
Just before her confirmation hearing was about to begin Thursday morning, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management withdrew her nomination, days after her criticism of the president for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection surfaced.
Kathleen Sgamma, the president of a Denver-based oil and gas trade association called the Western Energy Alliance, withdrew her consideration to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Senator Mike Lee said during the beginning of a Thursday hearing that would have considered her nomination.
Lee, the chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said White House officials informed him of the change early Thursday morning.
Trump nominated Sgamma, a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s energy and public land policies, for the position in February.
She previously called the volume of leases issued on federal lands under the Biden administration “ridiculously low” and praised one of Trump’s first executive orders of his second term that aimed to boost oil and gas production on public lands.
“It was an honor to be nominated by President Trump as Director of the Bureau of Land Management, but unfortunately at this time I need to withdraw my nomination,” Sgamma said in a statement shared by a White House spokesperson with The Denver Post. “I will continue to support President Trump and fight for his agenda to Unleash American Energy in the private sector.”
Sgamma did not return a voicemail seeking further information.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in an email to the Post that the administration accepted Sgamma’s withdrawal and looks forward to putting forth another nominee.
The Bureau of Land Management controls about 245 million acres of land, 700 million acres of subsurface and 30% of the country’s minerals, according to the agency. The lands have multiple uses, including energy development, mining, livestock grazing and conservation.
In Colorado, three national conservation areas, five wilderness areas, two national monuments and 53 wilderness study areas across a combined 8.3 million acres are all controlled by the agency.
The reason for Sgamma’s withdrawal remains unknown, but her criticism of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol surfaced in recent days.
On Tuesday, an investigative journalism project known as Documented released a 2021 memo Sgamma sent to oil executives detailing her “disgust” for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capital and “President Trump’s role in spreading misinformation that incited it.”
“We must listen and accept others whom we disagree with, even when they don’t return that respect,” she wrote. “We must stick to our nation’s founding principles of the sanctity and rights of every individual, even as many forces are undermining those basic principles.”
She ended the letter by wishing then-President-elect Joe Biden “the best of luck in his goal to return to normalcy and moderation.”
The former interior secretary under Trump, David Bernhardt, said her withdrawal was “self-inflicted,” and included a link to the website that posted her 2021 comments, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Bernhardt suggested that people whose views don’t align with Trump’s should not seek political appointments.
Officials with the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group, and the Center for Biological Diversity, a national nonprofit based on environment advocacy, applauded the withdrawal.
The Center for Western Priorities’ Deputy Director Aaron Weiss told the Associated Press that Sgamma’s withdrawal underscored the Trump administration’s creation of a “loyalty test” to weed out subordinates who are out of step with him.
He said she had refused to publicly disclose the Western Energy Alliance’s members, preventing journalists and activists from identifying her potential conflicts of interest if confirmed to lead the BLM.
“Good riddance to Sgamma, whose withdrawal is good news for America’s public lands and imperiled animals,” Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity said. “There’s no doubt that Trump’s next nominee will also be a poisonous threat to our wildlife and wild places, but this speedbump gives senators a chance to ponder whether they really want to feed America’s public lands and monuments into the snapping jaws of the fracking and mining industries.”
Sgamma helped author the energy policy section of Project 2025, a policy document from conservative thinkers outlining proposed goals for Trump’s second term. The section she contributed to criticized the Biden administration for waging a “war on fossil fuels” and proposed maximizing oil and gas leasing across the country.
Sgamma joined the Western Energy Alliance in 2006. Before that, she worked 11 years in the information technology sector and three years as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.
Sgamma was the second Coloradan to be nominated by Trump to lead a federal agency. Chris Wright, formerly CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, was previously confirmed as head of the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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