Energy

Corrupt Gov’t Employee FINALLY Pleads Guilty — 4 Months After DOJ Refused To Prosecute Him

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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A former Department of the Interior employee pleaded guilty to falsifying financial disclosure forms to hide $300,000 he had taken from an environmental lobbying group while he was a government employee.

Former Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) employee Stephen Barton pleaded guilty Monday before a federal judge in Idaho, about four months after U.S. district attorneys in Virginia and Idaho declined to prosecute him. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in January 2017.

Barton admitted he “willfully and knowingly submitted false disclosure forms to FWS, including a request for ethics approval to engage in outside work or activity, a confidential financial disclosure report, and several confidential certificate of no new interests forms,” according to the Department of Justice.

A Interior Department inspector general report from June found Barton did not disclose being on the payroll of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA) from 2004 to 2014. Barton earned more than $377,000 during his last six years with WAFWA while also working for the government.

Barton also admitted to “using a Government office phone, cellular phone, and email account, along with Government office space, to perform WAFWA business,” according to the IG’s report.

Barton also signed federal grant applications on behalf of WAFWA using the name of another group officer. During Barton’s time at FWS, the agency awarded WAFWA about $3 million in taxpayer grants.

Despite this evidence, the U.S. attorney’s offices in Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Idaho both declined to pursue the case. But now, four months later, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell announced Barton had admitted he was guilty.

The DOJ’s initial refusal to prosecute Barton came after government attorneys declined to go after the former head of the Bureau of Land Management, who stood to profit from the sale of federal land to a private developer.

The U.S. attorney for Nevada decline to prosecute Bob Abbey, who has ties to Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, and Interior Department investigators did not release the bombshell report until May 2016 — despite finishing their investigation in September 2015.

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