De-Trumpification, Part 5: Appoint New Independent Inspector Generals for DoD and DHS!
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
President Biden:
The violent invasion of our Capitol building on January 6, 2021 could not have succeeded without the assistance of Trump appointees at DoD, DHS, and the Secret Service. And now, as the January 6th Special Committee investigation extends to the cover-up of the coup plotting, we’ve learned that two Trump-appointed Inspectors General were central to that effort: DHS IG Cuffari and DoD’s Acting IG O’Donnell. There was reason enough to replace both of them in February 2021, and more than enough to do it now. We ask you to immediately appoint new Acting IGs for DoD and DHS, while working with the Senate to confirm permanent appointees with professional integrity and no political agenda.
Senate:
The Inspectors General that Trump appointed to oversee the DoD and DHS failed to report their departments’ involvement in the brewing coup attempt. That was ample reason to replace them as soon as the Biden administration took office. Now we know they did even worse by allowing crucial records to be destroyed. Please demand that President Biden immediately replace Joseph Cuffari as DHS IG and expedite the confirmation of Robert Storch as DoD IG.
Background
The January 6th Hearings and subsequent revelations have reminded us that the violent invasion of our Capitol building could not have succeeded without the assistance of Trump appointees.
At the Department of Defense, Chris Miller, then the Acting Secretary of Defense, refused multiple requests to call in the National Guard to put a stop to the growing riot. At the Department of Homeland Security, then-Secretary Chad Wolff and then-Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cucinelli also prioritized the corrupt former president’s wishes over those of Congress and the American people. Trump favorites in the Secret Service like Tony Ornato and Robert Engel also prioritized his desire to remain in power regardless of the voters' will. As the January 6th investigations have turned to the cover-up of the coup plotting and execution, we’ve learned that the Inspectors General (IGs) of DoD and DHS were Trump appointees who aided and abetted the insurrection by allowing vital evidence to be destroyed.
Congress enacted the Inspector General Act of 1978 to create a system of overseers who work within, but independently of, federal agencies, to detect and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. The legislation also requires Inspector General nominees to be selected “without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity and demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, financial and management analysis, law, public administration, or investigations,” prohibits the head of an agency from interfering in IG investigations, and sets up a dual reporting structure where an Inspector General reports to both the agency head and to Congress.
The DHS IG, Joseph Cuffari, nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in July of 2019, has a history of covering for Trump:
He rejected his staff’s recommendation to investigate the Secret Service’s role in the forcible clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square for Trump’s photo op in June 2020.
He sought to limit the scope of the investigation into the spread of COVID-19 within the Secret Service, which had been attributed to the Trump Re-Election Campaign not following COVID guidelines.
Mishandled a whistleblower complaint about Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Kirstjen Nielsen politicizing DHS assets. On April 27, 2021, Brian Volsky, former head of the DHS IG’s whistleblower protection unit, filed a memo with the Council of Inspectors General (CIGIE) documenting the mishandling of that complaint.
Cuffari’s office learned in December 2021 that Secret Service text messages from around January 6th, 2021 had been deleted. His staff members planned to contact the respective offices, collect the phones, and use data recovery specialists to recover them. But Cuffari decided not to review any of the phones, instead just writing to Congress in July 2022 that the text messages were lost.
In February 2022, when Cuffari learned that the text messages of former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and acting DHS Deputy Ken Cuccinelli were lost in a reset after they left the DHS, he did not investigate the deletion of those records.
Cuffari is still in the DHS IG position today.
In April and May 2020, Trump replaced several Inspectors General, starting with the IG for the intelligence community, who had informed Congress of the whistleblower complaint of Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, which led to Trump’s first impeachment. He also replaced the IGs for the State Department, Department of Transportation, Department of Health & Human Services, and the Department of Defense.
The current Acting IG at DoD, Sean O’Donnell, has been serving in that role since April 2020 and without legal authorization since November 15, 2021, when his ”Acting” term expired. (Biden nominated Robert Storch to replace him in November 2021, but his confirmation has been held up in the Senate, perhaps because he once criticized Tucker Carlson for spreading misinformation.)
While DoD Acting IG Sean O’Donnell remains in office, we have learned that the DoD wiped the phones of top departing DoD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021 attack. This was first revealed in a FOIA lawsuit by watchdog organization American Oversight, seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials.
References
Recent News
Missing Text Messages Prompted Internal Pentagon Policy Review, 8/05/22
First on CNN: Jan. 6 text messages wiped from phones of key Trump Pentagon officials, 8/02/22
Exclusive: DHS inspector general knew of missing Secret Service texts months earlier than previously known, CNN, 7/29/22
House Democrats call for a new inspector general in Secret Service text investigation : NPR, 7/26/22
Secret Service Ties to Trump Ring Alarm Bells Amid Jan 6. Revelations, Newsweek, 6/30/22
DoD’s acting IG is in his position unlawfully, GAO finds | Federal News Network, 6/28/22
Trump-Appointed Inspector General's Office Had Sexual Misconduct Findings Removed From Report Rolling Stone, 4/08/22
Big Picture on Government Oversight
Accountability: The Path to Improve Government Effectiveness and the Antidote to Authoritarianism Project on Government Oversight, June 2022
Did Whistleblower Reprisal Help Set the Stage for a January 6 Intelligence Failure?, POGO, July 2021
Increasing Transparency of Inspector General Reporting, POGO, May 2022, includes good IG history
The ‘Burrowing In’ of Political Appointees - American Oversight, 5/13/21
The ‘deep state’ of loyalists Trump is leaving behind for Biden - POLITICO, Jan. 19, 2021
Dozens of Trump appointees ‘burrow’ into Biden government | The Hill, 3/09/21
BlueLeaks Documents Bolster Whistleblower Account of Intelligence Tampering at Homeland Security, The Intercept, 9/12/21
DHS OIG, Whistleblower Reprisal Complaint, Sept. 8, 2020, PDF
These are all the inspectors general Trump has fired or replaced - CBS News, 5/19/20
Government Websites