Interior Secretary Zinke's office claims a reported firing of the department's acting Inspector General was a misunderstanding/DOI

In the end, it apparently was much ado over nothing. Mary Kendall, the Interior Department's acting Inspector General, is not being replaced by a Trump administration political appointee. 

Rumors of such a move led to consternation among House Democrats, who demanded an investigation, and a frenzy of media reports, including more than one that said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who is being investigated by Kendall for a variety of matters, had fired her.

The furor started earlier this week when The Hill news outlet said it had obtained an internal email stating that Kendall was being replaced by Suzanne Israel Tufts, a political appointee in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. That prompted outrage from some Democrats in the House.

"It is not clear that the new acting IG is sufficiently qualified or politically independent to take the helm of the Office of Inspector General, particularly at such an important time for the office,” read a letter they sent Thursday to the chairman of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. "The mere threat of replacing an IG when the head of the agency it oversees is under heavy scrutiny will send a signal to current and future IGs throughout the federal government that releasing unfavorable findings may threaten their job. It creates a permanent disincentive for the candor required for an effective IG and severs the independence that is the foundation of effective oversight over federal government waste, fraud, and abuse."

Secretary Zinke has been the subject of a number of investigations, some still ongoing, by Kendall's office. The IG has looked into his use of aircraft, whether he leaned on two U.S. senators from Alaska to secure their votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, whether the secretary wrongly scuttled a casino project on tribal lands in Connecticut, and 11 other matters.

So when word broke that Kendall was being replaced by a political appointee, it sounded like cover for the Interior secretary.

But the story wasn't true, according to Interior staff. Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift said that, "HUD sent out an email that had false information in it. Ms. Tufts was referred to the Department by the White House as a potential candidate for a position in the Inspector General’s office. At the end of the day, she was not offered a job at Interior.”

That clarification Thursday afternoon, first reported by Bloomberg, was met by ridicule from organizations that would like to see Secretary Zinke ousted.

"It's truly bizarre that it took Secretary Zinke's office more than a day to correct a story that they now claim is false," said Chris Saeger, executive director of Western Values Project. "Either Secretary Zinke's office is not being truthful or they're just not competent enough to perform basic functions. Regardless, the Office of Inspector General is vital to a well-functioning Interior Department. After this embarrassing incident, we demand that Secretary Zinke commit supporting a professional, independent IG who can act with integrity."

At the Sierra Club, Athan Manuel, director of the organization's Lands Protection Program, maintained the secretary was simply backtracking after the move caught the media's attention.

“Yet again, Ryan Zinke is trying to blame anyone but himself when he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar," said Manuel. "If Zinke thought he could bring in a political appointee to shield himself from meaningful investigation without anyone noticing, he was sorely mistaken. These flimsy efforts to point the finger at another agency and deny the truth only make it more clear that this was an attempt to escape accountability for his wrongdoing and corruption. A year spent racking up more scandals than any Interior Secretary in history doesn’t deserve a cover-up, it deserves dismissal.”