Ryan Zinke, Trump Interior secretary and Montana House candidate,

Ryan Zinke, the Republican nominee for Montana’s new House seat, lied to the Interior Department’s internal watchdog during a probe of an tribal casino application while he led the department under then-President Donald Trump, according to an official report released Wednesday.

Zinke and his chief of staff “made statements to [Interior’s Office of the Inspector General] with the overall intent to mislead them,” the OIG’s report said.

“We found that both Secretary Zinke and the [chief of staff] made statements that presented an inaccurate version of the circumstances in which the [Interior Department] made key decisions,” the watchdog’s report added.

“As a result, we concluded that Secretary Zinke and the [chief of staff] did not comply with their duty of candor when questioned.”

Zinke’s alleged lies came in response to questions about his interactions with department lawyers and employees, a U.S. senator, and lobbyists for MGM Resorts International. MGM, a casino operator, sought to block an application by two Native American tribes, the Mashantucket Pequots and the Mohegans, to jointly build and run a casino in northern Connecticut.

Zinke disputed the report’s findings. He unsuccessfully asked the Inspector General’s office to delay publicly releasing the report until after November’s election, where he seeks to represent the western area of Montana in its new second House seat.

In a statement Wednesday, his lawyer called the report and the timing of the release a “political smear.”

The watchdog’s findings come six months after another Inspector General’s office report found that Zinke misused his position as secretary to promote a development project in Whitefish, Montana, his hometown.

Wednesday’s report said the Inspector General referred the casino issue to the Justice Department in 2018, when Trump and his attorney general were still in office.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute in the casino lobbying episode last year. It also chose not to prosecute in 2021 after it received the report about the Montana development.

The newly released report details how MGM Resorts International actively opposed the Connecticut tribes’ application in a lobbying effort targeting Zinke. MGM operates a casino just over the border in Springfield, Massachusetts.

MGM’s lobbyists specifically pushed Zinke not to approve amendments to the tribes’ existing gaming agreements with the state of Connecticut, the report said. Connecticut required those amendments in exchange for the state approving the casino, which would operate on non-tribal lands.

Zinke ultimately sent the amendments back to the tribes without taking action, effectively stalling their plan.

He later told Inspector General investigators “more than 10 times that he relied on the Associate Deputy Secretary [of Interior] and the [department’s Office of the Solicitor’s attorneys] in making his decision to return the Tribes’ amendments without action,” the report said.

But those other people did not…