“Secretary of the Interior @RyanZinke will be leaving the Administration at the end of the year after having served for a period of almost two years,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Ryan has accomplished much during his tenure and I want to thank him for his service to our Nation.” The president said he would name a replacement this coming week.
Zinke is the latest Trump official to exit an administration plagued by questions of ethical conflict. And his departure comes as Trump has begun a shake-up in his administration. In early November, the president fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and last weekend he announced that his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, was leaving.
In one of the final acts of Kelly’s tenure as White House chief of staff, his team told Zinke that he should leave by year’s end or risk being fired, two people familiar with the discussion said.
Trump has been looking at replacing a number of other Cabinet officials. He has been telling associates for weeks that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will be leaving now that the midterm elections are over, and he has also frequently complained about Betsy DeVos, the education secretary. The homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, is also seen as likely to depart soon.
Zinke, a former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL, oversaw mineral extraction and conservation on roughly 500 million acres of public land. He had become the subject of several federal investigations, one of which his department’s top watchdog has referred to the Justice Department in a potential step toward a criminal investigation.
The inquiries include an examination of a real estate deal involving Zinke’s family and a development group backed by the Halliburton chairman, David J. Lesar.
Zinke has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. “I love working for the President and am incredibly proud of all the good work we’ve accomplished together,” he said on Twitter. “However, after 30 years of public service, I cannot justify spending thousands of dollars defending myself and my family against false allegations.”
Zinke’s deputy, David Bernhardt, a former oil lobbyist, is expected to step in as acting head of the department.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.