Huffman, Dexter Open Investigation into Insider Trading at Energy Fuels After Trump Guts Bears Ears

Huffman, Dexter Open Investigation into Insider Trading at Energy Fuels After Trump Guts Bears Ears

Energy Fuels CEO bought 74,000 shares days before the monument was cut by 90 percent, the largest insider purchase in company history

Washington, D.C. - Today, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) opened an investigation into potential insider trading at Energy Fuels Inc., after the company's CEO and Chairman of the Board bought company stock days before President Trump announced he was shrinking Bears Ears National Monument by more than 90 percent.

On July 7, 2026, CEO Ross Bhappu purchased 74,000 shares, the largest insider purchase of stock in the company's history, increasing his ownership by 41 percent. Chairman Bruce Hansen purchased 4,000 shares the next day. On July 13, Trump opened nearly 3 million acres of federal land to mining, including uranium-rich areas of the San Juan Basin that had previously been protected.

"The timing of these stock purchases indicate that nonpublic information was potentially available to both you and Mr. Hansen," the lawmakers wrote to Bhappu.

The lawmakers argue Energy Fuels' relationships with the administration put its executives in position to learn of the decision early and potentially profit from it. The company hired outside lobbyists that included a former Trump Interior official, identified strong government support as a selling point to investors in its expansion plans, and cited ongoing discussions with government sources as a way to close its financing gap.

The lawmakers write that this "demonstrates close coordination and communication with the Trump administration, which may have enabled you to receive privileged information about when the Bears Ears announcement would occur."

The new boundaries opened uranium and vanadium districts the company had been eyeing for years. In a 2017 letter to the Trump administration, Energy Fuels wrote that the monument "could affect existing and future mill operations" and pointed to "many other known uranium and vanadium deposits located within the [original boundaries] that could provide valuable energy and mineral resources in the future."

The reduction opened districts including White Canyon and Elk Ridge, areas holding multiple ore deposits west of Blanding, Utah. Ore mined there would be trucked to White Mesa, the only conventional uranium mill operating in the country.

Two Utah laws took effect in May that fast-track permits and fund critical mineral processing where the company's mill already operates. On June 18, Energy Fuels secured a $725 million loan from the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital, the largest that office had issued at the time. Two weeks after the monument shrank, the company broke ground on a mill expansion.

"After the recent passage of favorable state laws and securing funding from DOD, the final leg in Energy Fuels' quest to gain strategic position in domestic uranium extraction and processing was to attack protections for the land and the sovereign Tribal Nations that steward it," the lawmakers wrote.

The letter argues the company standing to profit from the monument reduction has spent decades harming the community next door. White Mesa sits a mile from the former boundary and the lawmakers describe a facility that "has become a radioactive dumping ground, taking in waste from Superfund sites, the Manhattan Project, and even foreign countries, all while storing more than 700 million pounds of toxic material in outdated, single-liner pits that threaten nearby tribal communities and groundwater."

"Energy Fuels cannot credibly claim to be a responsible operator while the nation's last uranium mill functions like an unregulated, bargain-bin waste dump on the doorstep of an Indigenous community," the lawmakers wrote. "Instead of respecting the Tribes for whom Bears Ears is sacred, you appear to be enriching yourself from their devastation."

Huffman and Dexter are demanding communications between Energy Fuels and Interior, Agriculture, and Defense officials, both executives' calendars, the company's lobbying contract with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, and internal revenue projections tied to redrawing the boundaries.

Read the full letter to Energy Fuels CEO Ross Bhappu here.

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