McCaskill: Obama Did Not Follow the Law in IG Firing

Wonder if this is one of the things Batman is disappointed about?

[rquoter]Key Obama Ally Says President Obama Did Not Follow the Law in IG Firing
June 16, 2009 6:23 PM

After being briefed today on President Obama’s firing last week of Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said the president did not abide by the same law that he co-sponsored – and she wrote – about firing Inspectors General.

“The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service,” McCaskill said. “The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal.”

McCaskill, a key Obama ally, said that the president’s stated reason for the termination, “Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason.”

She added that she was “hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible.”

We’ve covered this story HERE and HERE and HERE.

-jpt[/rquoter]

 

Surely Sam objects to politicizing the IG's office.

[rquoter]Fired AmeriCorps IG responds: White House charges are false

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
06/17/09 12:24 PM EDT

Fired AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin strongly denies the White House's claim that he was "confused, disoriented [and] unable to answer questions" at a May 20, 2009 board meeting of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the organization that oversees AmeriCorps. In a letter to several members of Congress Tuesday night, Norman Eisen, who is the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, wrote that at the May 20 meeting, "Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve." Eisen wrote that Walpin lost the confidence of the Corporation Board, which led to the decision to fire him.

In a detailed conversation Wednesday morning, Walpin said the White House is "grasping at nonexistent straws" to justify his termination as watchdog for one of the Obama White House's favorite federal programs.

Walpin described an atmosphere in which his investigations into fraudulent and inefficient use of federal dollars were often the cause of conflict with the board and top management of the Corporation. "The fact that the board doesn't like what I was doing in order to perform my duties as an IG is not a reason for removing me," Walpin said. "In fact, the more diligent an IG is in reporting criticisms of the board and the running of the corporation, the more the board doesn't want the IG there. But that's exactly why the IG position was created."

In this case, the board and top management were unhappy with Walpin's aggressive investigation of the misuse of federal AmeriCorps funds by Sacramento, California mayor -- and prominent Obama supporter -- Kevin Johnson. The board was also unhappy with Walpin's probe into the waste of AmeriCorps money at the City University of New York.

Those two investigations were on the agenda of the May 20 meeting. Walpin believed the board and management were not supporting his findings about the Sacramento and CUNY matters, and he let them know it. "There was no confusion in my opening remarks at the meeting, in which I chastised the board for what appeared to be the board's refusal to perform its duty, independent of management, in overseeing what management was doing, particularly as it regards determining the merits of the two reports I had issued," Walpin says.

"I started out by chastising the board and telling them their duty was not just to accept what management says, but to make their independent analysis of those reports," Walpin continues. He says board members were "clearly angry at my temerity in telling them they should not be acting in the manner of many for-profit boards, which have been recently criticized." Walpin says there was "no confusion whatsoever about our two reports, and our clear findings, which were a major part of the meeting."

So where did the White House allegation of confusion come from? Walpin says that he was not feeling well that day, and that he was repeatedly interrupted as he gave a prepared presentation. "Then at one point, they broke in and said I had to leave the room while they handled something else," he recalls. "I left my papers there. When I came back, they were in disorder. I attempted to reorganize them and be certain that I was not repeating what I had already discussed. But I was quickly denied time to review my notes and told that I had to leave because the board was too busy."

Walpin says no one at the Corporation ever said anything to him about allegedly being confused or disoriented, at the time or any time later. The first he heard the charge was Tuesday night, in Eisen's letter. "The only confusion exhibited was the board members' confusion as to their responsibilities," he says.

The letter from Eisen also said the White House "learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation's headquarters, insisting upon working from his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation's board." Walpin says that charge is false -- that the CEO and general counsel of the Corporation "expressly approved" the practice, and that Walpin had also discussed it with the chairman and vice-chairman of the Corporation's board.

In a conversation last weekend, Walpin explained his telecommuting arrangement. "For two years, I was totally in Washington," he explained. "I would come down from New York City on Monday morning and go back late Friday." Walpin said his wife was not happy with the arrangement, so at the beginning of January, Walpin wrote a letter to then-President Bush saying he would resign at the end of January. According to Walpin, his staff objected to his leaving and asked that he reconsider his resignation. They suggested that he solve the problem by telecommuting from New York on some days of the week. "I said I would try it through the end of June to see if it worked, both for the office and for me," Walpin told me. "And it worked." Walpin changed his plans and decided to stay.

In the Wednesday morning interview, Walpin said that after the Corporation's CEO and general counsel OK'd the arrangement, Walpin was at a meeting in which he heard that some board members had questions about it. Because of that, Walpin arranged a conference call that included Corporation chairman Alan Solomont and vice-chairman Stephen Goldsmith. "I talked to Solomont and Goldsmith specifically about this arrangement," Walpin says. "They all agreed that the policy of the government is to favor tele-working and reconcile work with family obligations. They said, 'OK, you go ahead, and we'll see how it works.'" Walpin says no one objected to his telecommuting after that.

As for another charge from the White House, that he showed a "lack of candor in providing material information to decision makers," Walpin says that is "a total lie." Finally, as to the White House charge that Walpin engaged in "other troubling and inappropriate conduct," Walpin says he understands what the White House is saying. "From their viewpoint, my criticisms of the Corporation's operations and the board of directors' failure to perform its duties is troubling," he says.

The White House suggestion that Walpin, who is 77 years old, is somehow mentally not up to his job and cannot perform his duties has caused great skepticism among Republicans on Capitol Hill. GOP investigators have talked to Walpin and found him entirely sharp and focused. "He has been collected and coherent," says one investigator. "What the White House described is not the experience that we have had in dealing with him." (That is also my own experience, having talked with Walpin for a total of about two hours since the weekend.) In addition, Walpin has also performed well in recent high-profile media appearances.

Lastly, even if Walpin had been confused and disoriented during one particular meeting, critics of the White House do not believe that would justify ignoring the requirements of the law governing how inspectors general are fired. That law requires the president to give Congress 30 days' notice, plus the cause for the firing. In Walpin's case, the White House called Walpin out of the blue, gave him one hour either to resign or be fired, and only later notified Congress, and then without giving any cause for its action. Only last night, after a lone Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill, said the White House "failed to follow the proper procedure" and requested a written explanation for the firing did the White House respond. [/rquoter]

 

now KJ is under investigation by the FBI.

[rquoter]Mayor caught up in Americorp mess investigated by the FBI
The Associated Press
06/18/09 1:54 PM EDT

Sacramento Mayor, and former NBA All-Star, Kevin Johnson(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The FBI is investigating allegations that an executive at a nonprofit founded by Mayor Kevin Johnson obstructed a federal inquiry into the group's spending.

Two months ago, Johnson and the St. HOPE Academy agreed to repay nearly $424,000 in federal grants to settle an investigation into whether the nonprofit misused AmeriCorps money.
Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown said he asked the FBI's Sacramento division to determine whether e-mails written by Johnson were deleted during the earlier investigation.

Allegations that e-mails may have been destroyed were disclosed in an April resignation letter from the group's former executive director, which was obtained by The Sacramento Bee.

Brown said he would not discuss the details of the current investigation.
In his resignation letter, Rick Maya said a member of the charter schools' board deleted Johnson's e-mails while the academy was under federal subpoena for misspending money it had received under the AmeriCorps program.

On Wednesday, Johnson said none of his e-mails had been lost, although he could not say if any of them had been deleted and then recovered.

"Every e-mail that I had has been preserved," Johnson told Sacramento television station KXTV. "I think the investigation will run its course, and I feel this will be behind us in the not-too-distant future."

Johnson, a former All-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, said he would cooperate with the investigation but had not been contacted by the FBI or U.S. attorney's office.

Malcolm Segal, an attorney who represented St. HOPE Academy during the AmeriCorps investigation, told The Sacramento Bee that he was confident the inquiry would show "that nothing inappropriate occurred."

Prosecutors declined to file criminal charges in the AmeriCorps investigation, saying there was no fraud but a culture of "sloppiness" in St. HOPE's record-keeping.

Senators have questioned President Barack Obama's firing of the AmeriCorps internal watchdog over the Johnson investigation. The mayor was an Obama supporter during the presidential campaign.

Late Tuesday, Obama special counsel Norman Eisen said in a letter to senators that Walpin engaged in inappropriate conduct that led board members to question his ability to serve.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Walpin disputed claims that he was confused and disoriented at an agency meeting and said he and his office acted with the highest integrity.[/rquoter]