Energy Fuels CEO Bought Stock Before Trump Cut Bears Ears
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Energy Fuels CEO Ross Bhappu purchased 74,000 shares on July 7, 2026 — the largest insider stock purchase in company history — raising his ownership stake to 41%, with board chair Bruce Hansen buying 4,000 more shares the next day.
- President Trump removed 1.24 million acres from Bears Ears National Monument less than a week later, cutting the monument by roughly 90% and reopening the land to mining claims.
- Reps. Jared Huffman and Maxine Dexter announced an investigation Monday, demanding Energy Fuels turn over communications between executives and federal officials along with the company's lobbying contracts.
- Energy Fuels denied any wrongdoing, saying its White Mesa Mill was never inside the monument and the company holds no properties, mining claims, or economic interests within the protected boundary.
- The Bears Ears Commission, a coalition of five Tribal Nations, called Trump's reduction "a major setback" to protections for a sacred ancestral homeland managed collaboratively with federal agencies.
- Energy Fuels had previously lobbied the first Trump administration to shrink Bears Ears in 2017 and received a $725 million Department of Defense loan on June 18 to develop rare earth elements, citing "strong government support" as a competitive advantage in a July SEC filing.
Why it matters: The timing — record insider purchases landing days before a presidential action that benefits the company — turns a routine monument fight into a federal corruption probe. Energy Fuels is already flush with $725 million in DoD funding and sits inside a $3 billion White House critical-minerals push, so any proven link between executives and the administration would expose how policy and personal enrichment intersected at the expense of tribes who call the land sacred.
Ask SkimNews
