An administrative judge sided with the Bureau of Land Management’s former top law enforcement official in a yearslong legal battle over his dismissal amid assertions he was being punished for complaints about a top BLM official.
Administrative Judge Evan Roth with the Merit Systems Protection Board issued a decision Friday that Eric Kriley, the former director of BLM’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security, should be reinstated to the post he was abruptly removed from in October 2021.
Kriley, who was initially hired as OLES director in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term, had accused a senior bureau official of trying to improperly exert influence over internal investigations.
Roth gave BLM 60 days from the date his May 9 order becomes final — set for June 13 — to “cancel” Kriley’s October 2021 removal and “retroactively restore him as Director of the Office of Law Enforcement and Security.”
