Washington DC - Donald Trump's nominee for a senior Interior Department post abruptly withdrew her nomination on Thursday after an investigative news outlet published a memo she wrote four years ago criticizing the president.

Kathleen Sgamma, head of the Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based oil and gas trade group, had been picked by Trump to head the Bureau of Land Management.

Senator Mike Lee, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced before her nomination hearing was set to begin Thursday morning that he had been informed by the White House that Sgamma had "withdrawn from consideration."

No reason was given, but the move comes after Documented published a January 7, 2021, memo from Sgamma in which she criticized Trump over the attack on the US Capitol the previous day.

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"I am disgusted by the violence witnessed yesterday and President Trump's role in spreading misinformation that incited it," she wrote.

Trump granted pardons on his first day in office to more than 1,500 people convicted or facing charges for the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by his supporters.

The Capitol assault followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election.

The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for the oversight of some 245 million acres of public lands, one-tenth of the nation's surface area.