BILLINGS, Mont. • Former U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke misused his position to advance a commercial development project that included a microbrewery in his Montana hometown and lied to an agency ethics official about his involvement in the project, according to a report by federal investigators released Wednesday.

The investigation by the Interior Department’s inspector general found that Zinke continued working on the commercial project through a nonprofit foundation in the resort community of Whitefish, Montana even after he committed upon taking office to break ties with the foundation.

The report also said that Zinke gave incorrect and incomplete information to an Interior Department ethics official who confronted him over his involvement, and that Zinke ordered Interior Department staff to help him with the project in a misuse of his position.

The Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation was created by Zinke and others in 2007 to build a community sledding hill in Whitefish, a tourist town about 25 miles from Glacier National Park and near the Montana-Canada border. The BNSF Railway company donated several acres of land to the foundation in 2008 to establish the park.

After being named Interior secretary in 2017, Zinke agreed to cut ties with the foundation and to stop providing it with his services.

But after resigning as the foundation’s president and while he was employed as the Interior Secretary, Zinke engaged in “repeated, ongoing substantive negotiations” with developers about the use of foundation property for a commercial project known as 95 Karrow, investigators said. The project included a potential microbrewery.

Zinke is a candidate in the June Republican primary for an open Montana Congressional seat, a position he held prior to joining former President Donald Trump’s cabinet.

His campaign blasted the investigative report as “a political hit job” and said in a statement that the involvement of Zinke’s family with the foundation led to the restoration of railroad land into a park where children can sled.

“They are proud of the children’s sledding park that dozens of kids use every weekend and countless locals use for exercise every day,” the campaign statement said.

The department’s inspector general’s office — led by Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, a Trump nominee — referred the results of the Zinke investigation to federal prosecutors for potential prosecution.

But the prosecutors who work for Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by President Joe Biden, declined to pursue criminal charges in the summer of 2021, according to the investigative report. Zinke and his wife, Lola, declined interview requests from federal investigators who were looking into the land deal.

Then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke speaks at EPA headquarters in Washington in December 2018.

the associated press file