An 18-year Interior Department attorney has quit over Trump administration drilling and energy policies, calling them an assault on the rule of law, a charge the department flatly rejects.
John Murdock, a self-described conservative Christian who joined the U.S. Department of the Interior’s legal office in 2002, officially stepped down on Sept. 30. The Guardian reported that it obtained his resignation letter with Public Domain, and that Murdock framed his exit as a stand for legal integrity after years of government service.
An Interior Department spokesperson dismissed the attack in plain terms. The department said one former employee’s personal disagreement with its policies “does not transform lawful policy decisions into an ‘assault on the rule of law,’ nor does his inflammatory rhetoric make his opinion accurate.” Officials added that Interior “stands firmly behind its work to implement President Trump’s agenda consistent with federal law.”
Murdock now lives in Texas. He wrote that he is walking away from stable salary and benefits, and that his retirement “likely becomes less lucrative and more complicated.” He also said he would “preserve my integrity.”
Washington has seen other high-level departures and internal friction in recent months, including cases such as when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned amid leadership clashes. Murdock cast his own exit as part of a wider wave of civil servants leaving “under less than ideal circumstances.”
Murdock said he first sent the resignation letter to his supervisor earlier this year. He wrote that he “felt an ethical obligation to highlight the glaring legal flaws I saw,” and warned, “We are headed in the wrong direction.”
His break centered on offshore oil and gas policy in the Gulf of Mexico and on actions by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the Interior unit that oversees offshore drilling. He pointed to a December gathering in New Orleans where Matt Giacona, then acting BOEM director, announced results of a major Gulf lease sale known as BBG1.
About 30 companies bid more than $370 million, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Giacona praised the administration’s pro-drilling agenda and said it was “upholding the highest environmental standards.” Murdock said that moment helped drive his decision to leave.
Personnel moves elsewhere in the capital have followed sharp disputes over direction and authority, much as when the Smithsonian chief stepped down after sustained pressure over the museums’ course. Murdock presented his Interior exit as a matter of legal conscience rather than a routine career change.
"Sadly, I am but one of many civil servants who have departed the government under less than ideal circumstances in recent years. If my story helps others or in some small way assists in preserving the rule of law, I am willing to share it."
BBG1 was mandated by Congress through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Shortly before the sale, Giacona, working with Interior’s legal office, issued a memo stating that the National Environmental Policy Act, a key Endangered Species Act provision, and several other environmental safeguards “are not applicable at the lease sale stage” of BBG1 and similar sales.
In a legal filing earlier this year, the administration argued that because Congress ordered the sale, the agency did not have “sufficient discretion to alter the scope or terms of the lease sale in ways that could affect environmental outcomes.” That is the core defense: follow the statute voters’ representatives wrote into law.
Environmental groups sued anyway. George Torgun, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, called the approach illegal and said the administration “has no basis for exempting these massive drilling lease sales from the bedrock laws that Congress passed decades ago after destructive oil spills off our coasts.” He also claimed the move was “a payback to oil and gas drillers.”
Those lawsuits fit a familiar pattern of green groups trying to block domestic energy production in court after failing to stop it in Congress. Interior’s position remains that it carried out a lawful, congressionally required lease sale.
"This illegal action is a payback to oil and gas drillers. Gulf communities, and the marine ecosystems that we all depend on, will pay the price."
Murdock went further than process objections. He wrote that, “Whether technically legal or not, it is a repugnant policy that I in no way support,” and singled out risks to the Rice’s whale in the Gulf. He also cited work after the Deepwater Horizon disaster “to help clean up a mess that BP had made,” and added, “I do not want to now be part of creating an even greater disaster.”
Agency reshaping and leadership fights have marked other corners of the Trump era in Washington, including Trump’s long campaign to reshape the Smithsonian. Murdock’s letter shows one career lawyer refused to make peace with the energy course the administration chose.
Murdock also attacked the administration’s offshore wind retreat. He wrote that decisions “to shutter nearly complete offshore wind projects and to pay Total Energies hundreds of millions of dollars to renounce wind leases are an assault on logic and the American taxpayer.” Reporting on the same dispute has described a reimbursement figure approaching nearly $1 billion for the French firm to drop east coast wind plans.
He argued an “all of the above” energy approach had become “one of the above,” meaning a heavy focus on oil and gas. Separately, he objected to a decision this year exempting oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act.
Giacona left BOEM in September and took a job with Halliburton, the oil-field services company. Halliburton did not provide comment before publication of the Guardian account.
Pressure and public conflict have also hit other legal and political figures in the city, including episodes in which Pirro faced mounting scrutiny and refused to address a high-profile case. Murdock’s protest letter is another example of an official choosing the exit door rather than carrying out the elected administration’s agenda.
"The recent decisions to shutter nearly complete offshore wind projects and to pay Total Energies hundreds of millions of dollars to renounce wind leases are an assault on logic and the American taxpayer."
Murdock complained about a weekly internal production titled “Inside Interior,” sent to every employee’s inbox. He wrote that while self-congratulatory updates were not new, “the change in tone to something approaching cultish worship has been jarring.” One line highlighted in coverage praised “the fearless leadership of President Donald J. Trump, who reminds us everyday what true patriotism looks like as he works tirelessly to make America great again.”
He linked his departure to a broader reduction in force. Coverage noted that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort began cutting government employment last year, and that Interior has lost thousands of employees since.
Federal workplaces rarely stay quiet when presidents change course hard and fast. Friction inside the government’s own legal ranks has surfaced before, including when Trump rebuked his own U.S. attorney after a sensitive case was dropped. Murdock chose resignation and a public letter instead of staying to implement policies he opposed.
"I walk away from the stable salary and benefits of a government job and my retirement likely becomes less lucrative and more complicated. Yet, I will gain much, including a deeper admiration for those who have made much greater sacrifices, and I will preserve my integrity."
Interior’s reply left little room for Murdock’s framing. Lawful policy is not lawlessness because a single attorney dislikes the outcome. Congress ordered Gulf leasing. The department says it followed federal law and the president’s energy agenda. Environmental litigants want the courts to stop drilling they could not stop through legislation. Murdock wanted no part of that agenda and left.
Voters hired a president to expand American energy and cut a bloated bureaucracy. One lawyer’s protest letter does not veto that mandate, and it does not turn a statute-driven lease sale into a constitutional crisis.