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Trump administration officials rejected recommendations from federal experts on Indian gaming policy when they blocked two American Indian tribes from opening a casino in Connecticut last year, documents obtained by POLITICO indicate.

The heavily blacked-out documents add to questions about whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his political appointees buckled to lobbying pressure from MGM Resorts International, a gambling industry giant that is planning its own casino just 12 miles from the project proposed by the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes.

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Interior’s inspector general is investigating the department’s handling of the tribes’ casino application, a spokeswoman told POLITICO, after Connecticut lawmakers asked the internal watchdog to look into the matter.

The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, don’t reveal the contents of the internal deliberations by the staff of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Indian Gaming. But they show that the career staffers were circulating what they labeled “approval” letters just 48 hours before their political bosses reversed course and refused to either OK or reject the tribes’ application — a nondecision that left the Indians’ East Windsor project in legal limbo.

To fight off the potential competition, MGM spent heavily on lobbyists, including George W. Bush-era Interior Secretary Gale Norton and firms with ties to the Trump administration, while enlisting the assistance of friendly lawmakers such as Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Mark Amodei. MGM lobbyists and the two Nevada Republicans held a handful of meetings and conversations with Associate Deputy Secretary James Cason in the months and days before he edited Interior’s letter holding up the tribes’ plans.

A spokesman for the tribes’ casino project said they were caught off guard by Interior's about-face and are glad to see the department's internal watchdog probing the matter.

"We are grateful there's an IG investigation into this issue because since last fall, none of the department's actions have passed the smell test,” said Andrew Doba, a spokesman for MMCT Venture, the company the tribes formed to own and operate the new casino. “Something clearly happened to pollute the process, which should be problematic for an administration that promised to drain the swamp."

The tribes have also sued, arguing that Zinke ignored his responsibilities under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act to either approve or reject their application in a timely manner and to act to protect the tribes' interests.

Cason and spokespeople for Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.

But the emails show that even Interior’s career staff was unsure how it would explain the sudden about-face.

“As for why we didn’t approve the Mohegan compact amendment, you say the letter speaks for itself,” Troy Woodward, a senior policy adviser in the Office of Indian Gaming, wrote in a Sept. 26 email to a colleague who anticipated having to answer questions about it at a gaming industry conference. And “like Forrest Gump, say: ‘that’s all I’ve got to say about that.’”

The dispute is complicated by the peculiarities of federal law on Indian gaming, which seeks to promote tribes’ economic development but also discourages the spread of off-reservation gambling. The two Connecticut tribes, which already operate two lucrative casinos on their reservations, are exploring a gray area with their proposed third casino, which a jointly owned private company would operate on nonreservation land.

MGM, which plans to open a casino later this year in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, says the tribes’ approach would set a worrisome precedent for other states.

“This is an unusual situation, and we’re kind of pushing the bounds on IGRA,” says Kathryn Rand, dean of the University of North Dakota School of Law and a co-director of its Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy. Rand is not affiliated with MGM or the Connecticut tribes.

The newly released documents do not show any effort by MGM to make its case to experts in BIA’s Indian gaming office. They also indicate that Interior officials closest to Indian gaming issues were ready to side with the tribes after about six weeks of internal review.

Instead, Interior reversed course with little official explanation less than 48 hours after their recommendations went to Cason, a veteran of the previous three Republican administrations who was one of President Donald Trump’s first hires at the department.

On Sept. 11, Woodward emailed around copies of “the edited letters for Pequot and Mohegan,” which he said had “been through the surname process,” a system for internal review. The contents of the letters were redacted, but each was about two pages long, and file names referred to both as “draft approvl” letters.

The following day, Woodward alerted colleagues that “Jim wants some changes,” referring to Cason. But on Sept. 13, Woodward still sent “approval” letters “for Mike Black’s signature,” referring to the then-acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs, along with a notice the department was required to publish in the Federal Register. Again, the attachments were redacted, but each was two pages long.

A day later, "Jim’s edits" came back, and the documents were no longer referred to as “approval” letters.

Instead, Black signed a one-page letter on Sept. 15 informing the tribes that it would be “premature and likely unnecessary” to weigh in on their gaming applications at all.

Returning the applications without approving or disapproving them appears to be an option Interior officials did not consider until earlier that day. A pair of redacted memos circulated that morning, including one “regarding Secretarial Authority to not act on a compact,” according to its title.

It is unclear precisely what happened over those days, but by then Cason had received ample input from MGM and its allies. As early as June, Cason met with a senior adviser to Zinke and a lobbyist from Ballard Partners, a Trump-connected firm MGM hired last year, to discuss issues related to the company, according to his calendars. And he was in touch with MGM supporters several more times over the intervening months up to the days before Interior’s response was being finished.

On Sept. 13, Cason met with Amodei, and the following day he had a teleconference with Heller, according to Cason’s calendar. MGM is a major employer in Nevada, and both lawmakers had previously raised concerns about the Connecticut tribes’ proposals and the potential expansion of off-reservation gambling.

Cason’s Sept. 14 meeting with Heller included some officials who were working on the Connecticut case, according to his calendar and the BIA emails. Later that day, Cason joined Zinke at a meeting at the White House with Rick Dearborn, Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy.

The president has his own history of clashes with the Mashantucket Pequot, whose Foxwoods Casino competed with his Atlantic City properties to draw gamblers from New York City. “They don’t look like Indians to me,” Trump infamously declared in a 1993 congressional hearing.

Several weeks after Interior released its decision, Norton sent Zinke a 24-page memo outlining legal arguments in support of the decision on behalf of MGM. Among the evidence she cited was Trump's congressional testimony, though not that particular phrase.

"Supreme Court precedent and President Trump's testimony counsel against approving Connecticut's discriminatory framework, the sole function of which is to grant MMCT, a private corporation, a monopoly over commercial, off-reservation, state-regulated gaming," the former Interior secretary wrote in her Oct. 30 memo to Zinke.

Black’s ambiguous Sept. 15 letter, which Cason had edited, left the tribes unable to proceed with their planned casino.

The tribes’ lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and MGM has asked to intervene in the case, although both Interior and the tribes say it does not have standing to do so.

The case hinges on dueling interpretations of the goals of the Indian gaming law — essentially, whether more weight should be given to IGRA’s goal of supporting tribes’ economic prospects or its prohibitions on off-reservation gaming in most circumstances.

In court filings, Interior has also stressed the importance of procedural differences between the two tribes’ prior gaming agreements, which it says should prevent the Mashantucket Pequot from participating in the case at all. While the Mohegan tribe was operating under a state gaming compact, the Mashantucket were never able to reach an agreement with Connecticut officials back in the 1980s — so Foxwoods has been operating under the terms of “secretarial procedures” authorized under a different section of the law.

The law says amendments to gaming compacts, such as the Mohegan's, must be approved within 45 days unless Interior can demonstrate that their terms violate federal law or the department’s trust responsibilities to the tribe. But it contains no such deadline for secretarial procedures such as the Mashantucket Pequot's.

Interior and MGM say that because the department has no obligation to act on the Pequot's proposed amendment, the entire case is effectively moot. However, the newly disclosed emails suggest that career officials were aware of that distinction throughout their review and did not see it as a reason to deny the tribes’ request.

Rand, the law school dean, said courts have not previously grappled with the issue. “That I think is a real interesting and open question that we wouldn’t have a whole lot to go on,” she said.

This case is also unusual because of the nature of the two tribes at issue and the lucrative market the two sides are battling over.

“That might be a bit implicit in MGM’s arguments — that the Mohegans and the Pequots aren’t acting like tribal governments in this enterprise, they’re operating like competitors. And because of their status ... they don’t need the protection that other tribes do,” Rand said in an interview. “The counterargument, of course, is that tribal sovereignty doesn’t depend on whether the tribe needs the federal government’s help. Tribal sovereignty is just a fact.”

Black’s Sept. 15 letter also does not mention the procedural difference between the tribes as a factor in deciding to return the applications without acting on them.