James G. Watt cause of death – James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first Interior Secretary, shifted environmental policy drastically toward commercial exploitation, sparking a national debate over whether America’s public lands and resources should be developed or preserved, died on May 27 in Arizona at the age of 85.
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On Thursday, June 8, 2023, his son Eric Watt confirmed his death. Eric refused to disclose a cause of death or explain why his father’s death was not announced sooner.
Watt rose to national notoriety after President Ronald Reagan nominated him for the position of Secretary of the Interior in 1980.
Watt had already created a name for himself in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain West, particularly among ranchers, farmers, and miners who felt the federal government was interfering with their lives.
In addition, he formed and led the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a powerful and aggressive law firm that pioneered a strategy of contesting environmental and public-lands legislation.
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According to archival reports, the organization had ongoing cases against the department when he took over.
In 1983, he resigned after controversially remarking that a panel reviewing his coal-leasing policies had “every kind of mixture — I have a Black. I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.”
Watt lobbied the Department of Housing and Urban Development after leaving the Department of the Interior in 1983.
Watt was arrested on 18 charges of criminal perjury and obstruction of justice ten years later in 1995, accused of lying to a federal grand jury investigating influence peddling at the Department of Housing and Urban Development at the time.
Watt pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of concealing documents on January 2, 1996. On March 12, 1996, he was sentenced to five years of probation, a $5,000 fine, and 500 hours of community service.
His high school love Leilani Bomgardner and their two children Erin Watt and Eric Watt survive him.
Source: abtc.ng
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