A conservative non-profit group believes Standing Rock Sioux’s deep connections with the Obama administration may have played a part in the government’s decision to reject the highly contentious Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).
Center for Individual Freedom in Virginia filed a Freedom of Information Act request Jan. 12 against Jodi Gillette — sister of the tribe’s chairman, Dave Archambault II — seeking all communications between her and President Barack Obama regarding DAPL. Gillette was a policy adviser for the Obama administration from 2012 to 2015.
“There have been a lot of rumors about the backroom dealings that led to the Administration’s decision to not issue the final easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline,” Timothy Lee, CFIF’s senior vice president of legal and public affairs, said in a press statement.
Lee wants to determine what communications, if any, Archambault had with Gillette prior to the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision in December to halt construction pending an environmental impact review.
Gillette worked for the Obama campaign in 2008 running a program called the North Dakota First American Vote, a project meant to goose the campaign’s American Indian outreach. She later became Obama’s liaison between Indian groups and the administration.
The National Sheriffs’ Association suspected collusion between Gillette and Obama. The group complained in October that Gillette’s ties to the administration and the tribe almost certainly helped prevent federal officials from helping control unruly protests at makeshift campsites near a DAPL construction site.
“There are now vocal concerns one Tribal Chairman’s sister has exercised her influence as a White House staffer and a Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs executive to actively thwart the authorization of federal law enforcement reinforcements,” Jonathan Thompson, executive director and CEO of the association, wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the company behind the pipeline, requested earlier this week U.S. District Judge James Boasberg prevent the government from publishing its intent to conduct an environment impact study on the project.
Any future studies on the controversial pipeline, the company said, should be scuttled until Boasberg rules on whether ETP already has the necessary permission to construct DAPL under Lake Oahe, a body of water near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
The Army Corps conducted an assessment last year determining the Oahe crossing would not have a significant impact on the environment, which was later overturned by Assistant Army Secretary for Civil Works Jo-Ellen Darcy, an Obama appointee.
ETP projects that DAPL, once completed, will create up to 12,000 construction jobs and provide millions in state and local revenue during the construction phase. It is losing $20 million every day it is delayed. The Corp’s impact study could take years to complete, according to the Department of Energy.
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