Sources: Trump expected to tap Wheeler as EPA deputy
President Donald Trump is expected to tap Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist and former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe, to be deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, sources familiar with the hiring process told POLITICO.
Sources cautioned that the decision has not yet been finalized, but they said Wheeler is expected to get the job. It’s unclear when Trump will make the announcement, but one source said it could be weeks before Wheeler is officially tapped.
Wheeler worked as an EPA staffer earlier in his career. He later joined Inhofe’s Senate office and then spent more than a decade as a Republican staffer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where he worked on several major pieces of legislation, including the 2005 and 2007 energy bills.
He has worked at the law firm Faegre Baker Daniels since 2009. He now co-leads the firm’s energy and natural resources practice.
Wheeler is a registered lobbyist for Murray Energy, the nation’s largest privately owned coal company, which regularly filed lawsuits against the Obama administration over its environmental regulations.
As a lobbyist, Wheeler may need to obtain a waiver to serve at the EPA.
Trump signed an executive order in January that bars registered lobbyists from participating in “any particular matter” on which they lobbied in the past two years. Those lobbying restrictions last for two years from the time the person joins the administration.
But the executive order says the administration can grant “any person a waiver of any restrictions” in its ethics and lobbyist requirements. Unlike an order signed by former President Barack Obama in 2009, Trump’s executive order doesn’t require public disclosure of the waivers.
Aside from Murray, Wheeler also lobbies on unspecified energy and energy efficiency issues for Underwriters Laboratories, an Illinois-based lab company, and on agricultural issues for cheese maker Sargento. His former clients include Xcel Energy and Bear Head LNG, as well as a cooking oil-recycling company, an auto auctioner and a medical isotope coalition.
Wheeler won’t be the only energy lobbyist to join the Trump administration. Mike Catanzaro, a lobbyist at the firm CGCN Group whose clients included several fossil fuel companies, took a job at the White House last month as an energy and environmental adviser at the National Economic Council. Catanzaro is a former EPW staffer to Inhofe.
Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a fellow Oklahoman, has also brought former Inhofe aide Ryan Jackson on as chief of staff. Byron Brown, a former Inhofe aide, is EPA’s deputy chief of staff and Mandy Gunasekara, a former EPW counsel, is now a senior policy adviser to Pruitt.
More aides with ties to Inhofe are expected to join the EPA in the coming weeks. Susan Bodine and Brittany Bolen, two EPA staffers, are widely expected to be offered jobs at EPA.
Wheeler, a White House spokeswoman and an EPA spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.