Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
Stephen Censky spent more than two decades as the soybean industry’s top man in Washington. Now he’s the No. 2 official at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the interests he’s charged with regulating are elated about it.
Internal emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Censky, the deputy secretary of agriculture, has been deeply involved in crafting USDA’s approach to the Renewable Fuel Standard, a federal mandate for the inclusion of biofuels in transportation fuel.