Interior Department installed Project 2025 author Dennis Kirk inside its inspector general's office; former IG called it a threat to independence

On August 4-5, 2026, former Interior Inspector General Mark Greenblatt and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) publicly disclosed that the Trump administration had installed Dennis Kirk -- a former White House budget-office official under Trump's first term and a co-author of a Project 2025 chapter recommending the federal government be "decentralized and privatized" as much as possible -- inside the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General (OIG) in Washington, D.C. Kirk previously held a similar placement inside the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General in 2025 while serving as a senior adviser to then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Inspectors general are structured by Congress to operate independently of the agencies and political leadership they oversee, auditing programs, contracts, and misconduct allegations without regard to political convenience. Greenblatt, whom Trump removed in a January 2025 mass firing of federal inspectors general, said in an August 4 statement that placing "a political operative inside an independent watchdog office creates a structural conflict that undermines public confidence in the office's independence." Huffman, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Kirk "is a fake and fraudulent watchdog" and that "each and every thing this political puppet does will be in service of Donald Trump."

Interior's OIG -- currently run on an acting basis by Deputy Inspector General Caryl Brzymialkiewicz -- is under congressional pressure to investigate senior department officials, including Associate Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen's financial ties to a Nevada lithium mine and contracting practices around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation. A spokesperson for Interior's OIG said the office had "no comment on this matter, which relates to personnel issues," neither confirming nor denying Kirk's placement; the Interior Department's press office did not respond to requests for comment, and Kirk did not respond to requests for comment.

Updates

2026-08-05 — Two Democratic senators cited Kirk's placement in calling for an OIG probe [2]

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked Interior's OIG to investigate the department's handling of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, after federal prosecutors dropped vandalism charges related to the pool and attributed the damage to faulty contractor work; their request referenced the questions Kirk's appointment had raised about the OIG's independence.

2026-08-18 — House Democrats opposed Kirk's IG nomination over shredding reports [6, 7]

President Trump formally nominated Kirk to be Interior's Senate-confirmed Inspector General on August 7, 2026. On August 18, six House Natural Resources Committee Democrats led by Ranking Member Jared Huffman sent Kirk a letter opposing his confirmation, citing reports that Interior officials had "routinely shredded official documents and used disappearing Signal messages" to avoid federal record-keeping requirements. The letter said the reported destruction of records "implies there is something to hide" and directed Kirk, if confirmed, to "maintain full compliance with the [Federal Records Act]" and to cease "document destruction of any kind, including shredding, the use of unauthorized messaging, automatic message deletion settings, or personal email."