Last Thursday , the Senate voted 56-to-41 to confirm David Bernhardt, President Trump’s pick for secretary of the interior. Four days later, the department’s inspector general opened an ethics investigation into the new chief for potential “ conflict of interest and other violations.”

Even by the standards of the ethically elastic Trump administration, this is impressive.

A former oil and gas lobbyist, Mr. Bernhardt has been under scrutiny since joining the Interior Department in 2017 as its deputy secretary. Many of the complaints now under review were revealed in a trio of investigations by The Times, which detailed allegations that Mr. Bernhardt continued to work as a lobbyist for months after filing documents claiming to have ended such work, blocked the release of a department report on the toxic effects of certain pesticides on hundreds of endangered species and used his office to champion policies favored by former clients. Separately, CNN reported that, during his tenure, the department “made at least 15 policy changes, decisions or proposals that would directly benefit Bernhardt’s former clients.”

Fresh questions are also emerging about Mr. Bernhardt’s possible violation of public-records laws. This week, the department acknowledged that aides had intentionally omitted meetings with industry groups from his public schedule and that, contrary to previous claims, his private schedule is kept on a lone Google document regularly overwritten by his staff. The National Archives and Records Administration has felt moved to get involved.

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, argued for Mr. Bernhardt’s confirmation to be delayed until some of the ethical clouds could be dispelled. That idea went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate. When the inspector general’s office announced its inquiry, Mr. Wyden was quick to gloat, “We now have an interior secretary who has been on the job for one full business day and is already under investigation.”