This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The new interior secretary, David Bernhardt, met with a lawyer for a Native American tribe that is linked to the political scandal haunting Bernhardt’s predecessor, according to internal agency records.

The meeting was disclosed in daily summary cards released by the agency but had not been recorded in earlier calendars. It raises fresh questions about Bernhardt’s potential conflicts of interest.

A grand jury is reportedly investigating Ryan Zinke’s role in blocking requests from two tribes to operate a casino in Connecticut. Zinke’s decisions followed a major lobbying campaign revealed by Politico.

Now the previously unreleased records show Bernhardt, a former lobbyist, met with a lawyer who may have been involved in the fight.

In early April 2018, Bernhardt sat down with Marc Kasowitz, a former lawyer for President Donald Trump whose firm was representing the Schaghticoke tribal nation. The Schaghticokes opposed the casino. They sued alongside MGM Resorts International, a competitor.

An interior department spokeswoman confirmed the meeting had happened but said it was about reinstating the tribe’s federal recognition. The agency provided a related letter from the tribe.

The Schaghticoke chief, Richard Velky, disputed that, though. He said he had met Kasowitz with another lawyer from his firm – the former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman – about an unrelated state-level lawsuit. But he employed a different law firm to handle the tribe’s federal status.

Kasowitz and others at Kasowitz Benson Torres did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked if Bernhardt was involved in the casino decision, the interior department spokeswoman, Faith Vander Voort, said: “Mr Bernhardt had absolutely nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing.” She said the omission of the meeting between Bernhardt and Kasowitz from earlier calendars had been “a technical error”.

Interior’s internal watchdog is already reviewing other complaints that Bernhardt may be making decisions in favor of former clients.

Andrew Bates, spokesman for the Democratic opposition research group American Bridge, said: “It’s no wonder former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt – who is now under ethics investigation by his own department – kept his calendars secret for so long.

“If he met with one of the president’s personal lawyers about helping a major international corporation bully tribal nations out of fairly competing with them, then it absolutely epitomizes the ‘swamp’ that Donald Trump promised to drain but is in fact flooding,” Bates said.

Kasowitz, the lawyer representing the Schaghticokes, also has ties to another company that may have retained Bernhardt as a lobbyist. MGM was a client of the lobbying firm where Bernhardt worked before joining the Trump administration, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

The New York Times reported that Bernhardt continued to lobby for a separate client, a powerful California agribusiness group, until the month he was nominated to the No 2 position at interior, in contrast with lobbying reports to the government.

Kasowitz is well connected in the Trump administration, having been a longtime personal lawyer to the president and then having advised him on the special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He has also worked with two politically powerful Russian oligarchs – Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg – who are business partners of Len Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries. Records showed Bernhardt lobbying for Access Industries, although those records have been amended. The interior department has said that Bernhardt did not work for Access Industries.

Bernhardt also met with others involved in the lobbying effort, including Gale Norton, a lobbyist for MGM who was interior secretary under George W Bush, as HuffPost reported.

He met with her in October 2017, around the same time she sent a letter to Zinke urging him to decline the application. Vander Voort said that meeting was “purely personal”.

Bernhardt met around that time with the US representative Mark Amodei, a Nevada Republican whose state is home to major MGM operations.

The tribes seeking to develop the casino – the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes – have since gained approval and declined to comment on this story, referring to a statement in March applauding the interior department for resolving the issue.