Ryan Zinke: Trump’s outgoing interior secretary to face continued legal troubles after leaving White House

Senior member of Trump administration could face up to five years in prison if found to have used position to influence real estate deal, according to watchdog ethics officer

Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke will be leaving Donald Trump’s White House administration amid pressure over allegations of ethics violations (Reuters)

Ryan Zinke's legal troubles are "likely to continue" after resigning as US interior secretary over allegations of ethics violations, the ethics officer of a nonpartisan watchdog group has said.

Donald Trump announced that Mr Zinke will be leaving his White House administration at the end of the year on Twitter on Saturday.

Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Centre, said that investigations into Mr Zinke’s actions are likely to continue even after he resigns.

Mr Marsco said that if those inquiries turn out badly for Mr Zinke, he faces the threat of criminal penalties that could hobble his political future.

“It’s not a Get Out of Jail Free card to just quit,” Mr Marsco said.

Mr Marsco said that the most damaging inquiry could be a Justice Department examination of a real estate deal in Montana involving Mr Zinke’s family and a development group backed by the chairman of energy services company Halliburton.

If the department finds that Mr Zinke willfully used his official position to influence the deal and benefit himself, he could be prosecuted under a federal conflict of interest law and, if convicted, face a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for each violation.

The attorney general has discretion over whether to bring the charges.

Before Mr Trump announced his departure on Twitter, Mr Zinke, 57, had been a man accustomed to winning.

As a politician, he had leapt up the Republican pole, rising from freshman state senator to Cabinet secretary in a matter of eight years. Friends in Montana have long said they expected him to run for governor in 2020.

The ethics inquiries may now block that path – or they may not.

Through a spokeswoman, Heather Swift, Mr Zinke declined to be interviewed for this article.

He has, however, told a number of significant players in Montana politics recently that he is not planning to run for governor.

Some of them speculate that he may be waiting for the investigations to run their course. Others say they think he may be more interested in staying in Washington than in returning to state politics after his resignation takes effect at the end of the year.

The New York Times