Who’s Watching The Federal Government’s Joke Of A Watchdog System?
BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY MAY 23, 20241/2
The Integrity Committee has failed to root out serious allegations made against its allies while targeting others with harassment and investigations, nearly a dozen people familiar with the situation report.
When President DonaldTrump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linickat the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May of 2020,all hell broke loose. Left-wing media and Democrats were outraged that he was removed, even as Pompeo said he should have fired Linick much earlier than he did.
The firing took place afterinformationheld by the State Department’s inspector general’s [IG] office somehowfound its way into a Daily Beastarticle headlined,“State IG Set to Recommend Discipline for Trump’s Top Iran Hand.”The article, sourced to “two government sources involved in carrying out the investigation,” was about theState IG’s investigation into Brian Hook, a State Department official who had ended the employment of some individuals perceived to be loyal to the Obama administration and hostile to President Trump’s Iran policy.
Because theleakof the report almost certainly camefrom Linick’s office, Linick told State Department officials he’d contact his friends at the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency(CIGIE), whose Integrity Committee watches the IG watchdogs. Instead, he picked the Department of Defense IG to investigate whether any of the 15 State Department IG’s staff with access to the draft report were responsible for the leak.
That IG found, in an “exceedingly cursory” review, that whileLinick had emailed sections of the Hook report to his personal emailaccount, in violation of State Department policy, there was no specific evidence that this was related to the leak. Linick told State Under Secretary Brian Bulatao in mid-March that theDefense Department IG said it could find no evidence of any State IG staff being involvedin the leak. Bulatao asked for a copy of the report, and Linick said he’d provide it but didn’t. Two months later,Linick was put on administrative leaveand told he would be let go.He was told not tospeak to IG staff and not to enter the building.However, he communicated with IG staff and entered the building.
Bulatao sent a letter to Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department IG who at that time led CIGIE, and asked him toplease conduct a reviewof what had happened. “[T]heremay have been a significant breakdownin the typically rigorous standards of an IG investigation, warranting CIGIE review,” Bulatao pleaded.
Horowitz referredthe request toCIGIE’s Integrity Committee. That committee issued aremarkable letterin December of 2020saying everything Linick had done was reasonable, including failing to provide the leak report to State Department officials, entering the building while on leave, mailing official business to his personal account, and shopping around for his own hand-picked investigator.
Watchdog Watcher Is Failing
Thelast line of defensein preventing wrongdoing at the highest levels of the federal government is supposed to be theIntegrity Committee. Under theleadership of Kevin Winters, however, it has failed to root out serious allegations made against its allieswhile targeting otherswith endless harassment and meritless investigations, nearly a dozen individuals familiar with the situation report.
In fact, members of Congress are askingWintersto explain by June 3why he “failed to investigate serious allegations” against three senior Department of Homeland Security IG employees who were found by an independent analysis conducted byWilmerHale to have engaged in fraud, misconduct, retaliation, and abuse of authority.
The request from Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and eight other members of Congress relates to anincident that began in 2019, before Winters was appointed.That’s when DHS IG Joseph Cuffari’s requestto the Integrity Committee to look into the three employeeswas rebuffed. Themisconduct was so severethat Cuffari was advised to engage in a formal procurement process to have an outside law firm conduct an independent and unbiased investigation. The WilmerHale firm found thatnot only were the allegations substantiated, but the then-vice chairwoman of CIGIE had encouraged the employees’ actions.That woman, Allison Lerner, struggled to answer questions about her role during a 2021 line of questioning from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/23/whos-watching-the-federal-governments-joke-of-a-watchdog-system/