Why is Joe Biden still standing by his Earth First! nominee for Bureau of Land Management?

‘Not an innocent bystander’: Ex-agent disputes Biden nominee’s tree-spiking account

 Monica Showalter   "It's starting to look bad for Tracy Stone-Manning, Joe Biden's nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management.

"The latest news is that she lied to Congress about her involvement in eco-terrorism; an Earth First! tree-spiking incident in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest in 1989.  At the time, she wrote a profane threatening letter to "warn" loggers about the spikes and then told Congress she knew nothing about the whole thing and was merely an innocent college kid forced to do it to try to make sure nobody was "getting hurt."  It didn't happen that way, according to various sources.

"Normally, a person with any such involvement, lying or not, would be exceptionally unfit to run the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 245 to 247 million acres of public land, and has 9,000 employees.  Putting her in charge of it would be like putting an embezzler in charge of the Federal Reserve. 

"Yet incredibly, Joe Biden continues to stand by her, even as one bad thing after another about her activity now rolls out. 

The Biden administration said Thursday it "stands by Tracy's statements and written submissions."  . . .  

Public documents obtained by the Journal tell the real story. According to that 1993 court transcript, Ms. Stone-Manning arrived in Missoula in 1988 and immediately moved into a house occupied by Earth First! members. This was the height of the wilderness wars, and Earth First! had by the mid-1980s defined itself as the tip of the fanatical spear. Its modus operandi was violence and terror, or what it called "monkeywrenching"—spectacular arsons, equipment destruction, and most notably the deadly practice of tree spiking.  (Emphasis added by TD)

‘Not an innocent bystander’: Ex-agent disputes Biden nominee’s tree-spiking account

All 10 Senate Energy Republicans urged Mr. Biden in a Wednesday letter to withdraw her nomination, noting that Bob Abbey, who led the agency under President Obama, pulled his support last month for Ms. Stone-Manning.

. . . " Mr. Merkley described her as an influential member who “played an active role in the Earth First! hierarchy.” He also said that he decided to retire early after 28 years with the Forest Service in part over harassment and death threats from Earth First!"