Wampum

See what reading the business briefs in the Denver Post yields:

Holland & Hart may be Denver's largest law firm, but it's influence is felt all over the West. In fact, one of it's web address is particularly telling:

www.idaholaw.com

The current governor of Idaho is Dirk Kempthorne (R). Kempthorne has been nominated by Bush as the new Secretary of the Interior, replacing fellow Westerner, Gale Norton of Colorado.

While Holland & Hart's new lobbyist Steve Barringer's client base should make most environmentalists turn purple (Coeur D'Alene Mines, National Mining Association, etc.), his colleague Kelly Johnson's background is much more intriguing. See, I became familiar with the office of the director of the U.S., Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division when I ran across an Abramoff email to Italia Federici. Federici, in her reply to Abramoff, mentioned she had recently dined at Abramoff's Signature's restaurant with Steven Griles and Tom Sansonetti.

Sansonetti was Johnson's predecessor as AAG at Environment and Natural Resources. He was also one of the invitees to Federici and Julie Finley's now infamous CREA reception for Interior in September of 2001. He also was an alum of Holland & Hart's Cheyenne, Wyoming office, and Chair of the Wyoming Republican Party in the 1980s, when a certain Congressman from the state roamed the halls of Washington shilling for oil companies.

Even prior to his departure in March, 2005 (to return to Holland and Hart), Sansonetti viewed Johnson as his #2 at DoJ. From an E&ETV interview in early 2005:

Darren Samuelsohn: If President Bush does not nominate somebody before you leave. Give us a sense, who is Kelly Johnson and is she a political figure --

Tom Sansonetti: She is, Kelly Johnson's my right hand lady and an absolutely key and important figure within the Environment and Natural Resource Division and frankly, the building as a whole because I described that hub and spoke system and I assure you with 7,000 cases and with my having to work with the EPA administrators, Gale Norton and Mike Johanns, the Pentagon is my third biggest client.

Darren Samuelsohn: Right.

Tom Sansonetti: There's just too much for any one person to do. So we divide up our duties. She oversees the natural resources sections, including the Endangered Species Act group and our budget. She has had a number of years, a half-dozen years, in private practice in the energy field, worked for Wyoming Senator Craig Thomas for a while and Senator Frank Murkowski from Alaska, when on up through the Senate Energy, deputy general counselship --

Darren Samuelsohn: OK.

Tom Sansonetti: And then worked with me on the transition. I was the team leader for Interior. The vice president asked me to head that up during the transition of 2000 and Kelly Johnson was one of my other four individuals on there. So she knows the area of energy, knows the Hill, has a real good feeling for all the clients because she's been following all the key cases in most of the departments and now of course after three and half years knows the entire division, knows the players, knows the sections chiefs, knows the strength and sometimes the weaknesses of individual attorneys. So she'd be a great replacement by the way.

According to previous reports by Josh Marshall, Jack Abramoff and J. Steven Griles were also on the Interior transition team.

While at the DoJ, Johnson apparently was up to her knees in the DoI tribal trust fund fiasco:

Although Norton won't testify in court, she may be forced to answer to Congress. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the House Resources Committee are considering opening their own investigations into Slonaker's ouster.

In addition to Norton, attorneys for Indian account holders want to depose Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles and Indian Trust Transition Director Ross Swimmer. Three government attorneys -- Kyle Sampson of the White House and Kelly Johnson and Jeffrey Clark of the Department of Justice -- have been subpoenaed.

Johnson, along with Clark and Sampson, participated via teleconference in the interrogation and subsequent firing of special trustee for American Indians, Tom Slonaker. Slonaker testified before the Senate that Norton's handling of Trust fund matters was the rosy picture she and her cronies were painting.

Johnson's tenure on the Hill overlapped with DoI Secretary-nominee Dirk Kempthorne. As Senior Counsel on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where she specialized in natural resources, parks and public lands issues, Johnson's legislative issues frequently brought her in contact with Kempthorne, who sat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

While the initial fallout from the Abramoff scandal seemed to force many of the anti-environmentalist pigs to scurry, it looks as though, with the nomination of another of their ilk as the head of Interior, they're beginning to return to the trough.