Joseph Schmitz, an attorney and former Pentagon inspector general, was tapped as one of Trump’s five foreign policy advisors last month, along with a bewildering mix of conspiracy theorists and “third-rate people.”
Schmitz served as co-counsel in a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of Montana State Senator Bob Keenan (R-Bigfork) and former state Senator Verdell Jackson (R-Kalispell) asking a court to block the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes from taking over management of the former Kerr Dam, reported the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights.
The dam, which was built in the 1930s on tribal land, was renamed the Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ dam when the tribally owned Energy Keepers, Inc., paid nearly $18.3 million to NorthWestern Energy to acquire it.
That’s when things got weird.
Schmitz, who’s an “insider” with the right-wing Newsmax website and senior fellow at the virulently anti-Islam Center for Security Policy, and fellow co-counsel Lawrence Kogan filed a lawsuit seeking to block the transfer — which they argued posed a national security threat from Turkey.
The attorneys claimed the dam transfer would allow the Turkish government and terrorists to obtain nuclear materials, although they were unable to provide any factual evidence of their claims.