A letter from the Interior Department's internal watchdog said it found no evidence that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke shrank the boundaries of a national monument in Utah to benefit a Republican lawmaker. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Energy & Environment Threat of fundraising, monument probes lifts for Zinke

The Federal Election Commission said it won't investigate Ryan Zinke's involvement in a Virgin Islands political fundraiser whose Republican organizer failed to disclose where the money ended up, the second ethics probe against the scandal-plagued Interior secretary to be scrapped in the past week.

The FEC said in a letter dated Nov. 21 that the fundraiser for the Virgin Islands Republican Party in March 2017 was a matter for the islands' territorial government, not the federal government.


Interior’s inspector general also notified the agency on the same date that it had found no evidence that Zinke shrank the borders of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to benefit a local Republican lawmaker.

The IG letter concludes one of the multiple ethics investigations that the inspector general has opened into Zinke’s behavior — though other probes still cast potential clouds over him. The IG has not yet issued an opinion on Zinke's involvement in a land deal in his native Montana that was backed by Dave Lesar, the chairman of Halliburton. That investigation is believed to have been referred to the Justice Department, according to media reports.

An earlier IG report found that Zinke had skirted Interior's travel policy by taking family on official trips, using Interior staff and vehicles to transport friends and as security on personal trips. He had also pushed staff to look into making his wife a department volunteer so she could travel with him at taxpayer expense.

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In its inquiry into the Virgin Islands event, the FEC said that it did not see a case since it was a non-federal event for the territorial group. The funds were deposited into a Virgin Islands bank account, it said, and "were disclosed to the Virgin Islands Election System.”

The FEC’s decision to not investigate means that the public won’t know who attended the fundraiser or paid as much as $1,500 each to have a photo taken with Zinke, said Brendan Fischer, director of the federal reform program at Campaign Legal Center, which brought the complaint to the FEC.

The Virgin Islands Republican Party has faced criticism over its fundraising arm, VIGOP. Some critics, including past Republican clients, say the group bilks conservative donors with promises to fight Democrats while spending the bulk of its money on overhead instead of political advocacy. The group pours the vast majority of its money into a small group of Washington-area political consultants who have also done work for Zinke's previous campaign and leadership PACs.

The head of the Virgin Island‘s territorial party, John Canegata, has described himself as having close ties to Zinke and Interior. Finance forms filed with the FEC show Canegata had a “meeting with Dept. of Interior and guest speaker at a veterans fundraiser” in August 2017.

In the probe of Zinke's decision to reduce the size of the Utah monument, the Interior IG also said it did not find signs he had acted improperly, according to a copy of the letter was obtained by POLITICO. The letter stems from complaints that alleged Interior redrew the boundaries of the monument to benefit Mike Noel, a Trump supporter and Republican state senator, who owns property near the protected area.

“We found no evidence that Noel influenced the DOI’s proposed revisions to the GSENM boundaries, that Zinke or other DOI staff involved in the project were aware of Noel’s financial interest in the revised boundaries, or that they have Noel any preferential treatment in the resulting proposed boundaries," Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall states in the letter. The Washington Post originally posted a copy of the letter.

Interior did not respond to questions.

