We’ve released an investigation—and it’s rocking the boat.

 

POGO UNCOVERS TOP WATCHDOG SQUASHED TWO INVESTIGATIONS INTO SECRET SERVICE POGO just released an investigation this week into the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) top watchdog and it’s already making waves. As highlighted in the Washington Post, POGO revealed that in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security killed two investigations regarding the Secret Service before they could even begin. After police murdered George Floyd last summer, then-President Donald Trump walked through Lafayette Square, where he staged a photo op in response to Black Lives Matter protests. To dispel the protestors, law enforcement used chemical agents and rubber pellet grenades, despite having cleared the square many times before without the use of force. And now, it seems the investigation into this excessive use of force was stopped. Read POGO’s investigation to learn about who stopped this investigation in its tracks. That same inspector general of DHS later chose not to investigate the Secret Service’s COVID-19 policy despite dozens of agents’ contracting the virus after accompanying Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence to campaign events in August 2020. Why pause an investigation that was meant to preserve the health of agents dedicated to protecting the highest office in the country? An internal agency document says the pause was to “narrow the scope” of the investigation. The question we’re asking: How nonpartisan can an inspector general be if he paused two investigations that would be politically unfavorable to a president during an election year? Moments like these are the reason we have inspectors general: the public relies on them to be impartial watchdogs protecting the integrity of government and the interests of the public. And POGO’s own director of public policy, Liz Hempowicz testified on this issue in Congress this week. POGO is pushing for Congress to enact legislation to increase IG independence from political actors so that these watchdogs can do their jobs in a nonpartisan way—driven by facts; not someone’s political agenda. Read our investigation to learn more. Thank you for staying informed—even when it’s complicated.

Oversight

Pulling Punches: Trump-Appointed Watchdog Suppressed White House-Related Probes

BY NICK SCHWELLENBACH & ADAM ZAGORIN | FILED UNDER INVESTIGATION | APRIL 20, 2021

12 MINUTE READ

In the months leading up to the 2020 election, the Department of Homeland Security’s top watchdog, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, quashed a pair of investigations involving the Secret Service that had been recommended by the agency’s career staff, according to multiple federal sources and records reviewed by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

One of the inquiries would have scrutinized the Secret Service’s controversial use of force in and around Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square last June against people protesting the killing of George Floyd. The aggressive removal of demonstrators by the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies led to injuries, which immediately preceded Trump’s photo op at a church across the square where he brandished a Bible upside down.

A second proposed inquiry would have examined Secret Service policies for handling the threat of COVID-19 to agents protecting high-level officials including the president.

As a result of Inspector General Joseph Cuffari’s decision not to probe the chaotic Lafayette Square episode, a variety of unanswered questions remain surrounding the Secret Service’s adherence to its own use-of-force and related policies. Because Cuffari blocked the proposed review, it’s unclear if a full picture will ever emerge of who was in charge or what happened inside the Secret Service’s Joint Operation Center, which normally plays a key coordination role when protestors are cleared from Lafayette Square and its environs.

While not the aim of the probe, an investigation could have shed light on a central point that remains in dispute: Trump administration officials have contended that clearing protestors just coincidentally happened right before the photo op. Many critics find that implausible.

Yet the Secret Service was deeply involved in both events. Moreover, the White House staffer who organized Trump’s photo op was top Secret Service official Anthony Ornato who, in a reportedly unprecedented arrangement, was on leave at the time to serve as White House deputy chief of staff for operations. It remains unclear whether Ornato’s role in the events of Lafayette Square ever came under scrutiny. (Ornato has since returned to the Secret Service, where he now directs the agency’s training efforts.)

Ornato also coordinated campaign logistics for Trump, then-Vice President Mike Pence, and others at political events, some of which became COVID-19 super-spreaders, infecting agents and others. Cuffari’s sidelining of his agency’s proposed review of Secret Service COVID-19 policies avoided any potential examination of his role and why so many agents, not to mention Trump, contracted the illness. At one point, more than 130 agents, or about 10% of the agency’s core security personnel, were ordered to isolate or quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the extent of the spread.

A Secret Service spokesperson would not comment to POGO, other than to say that the agency has been following all Centers for Disease Control and other appropriate protocols.

An investigation would also likely have examined Secret Service protocols last October when Trump, presumably still contagious with COVID-19, ignored medical advice and rode around waving to supporters from a presidential SUV as Secret Service agents were sealed inside with him.

“Any potential criticism of the administration or the White House likely was a factor in Cuffari’s decisions and helped determine what work the agency would and would not be permitted to take on,” said a federal official in the government oversight community familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

“When there are hot-button, politically sensitive matters, those are precisely the kind of issues an inspector general should take on.”

FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL

Indeed, Cuffari’s decision to avoid delving into such sensitive issues in the run-up to a presidential election inevitably raises questions about his role as an independent and non-partisan watchdog overseeing one of the largest and most consequential Cabinet departments. That concern is compounded because he did so by overruling the previously unreported recommendations of his own staff.

Unlike most other Trump appointees, but typical for inspectors general, Cuffari remains in his role during the Biden administration.

“When there are hot-button, politically sensitive matters, those are precisely the kind of issues an inspector general should take on,” a former inspector general, who requested anonymity because he routinely interacts with watchdog offices, told POGO.

“Our office does not have the resources to approve every oversight proposal,” a spokesperson for Cuffari’s office told POGO. “We have to make tough strategic decisions about how to best use our resources for greatest impact across the Department. In both of these cases, we determined that resources would have a higher impact elsewhere.”

“That a matter is politically sensitive is not a reason in itself to review the issue, nor is it a reason to decline to take it up,” the spokesperson emailed. The spokesperson also pointed to a number of reviews that they said show a willingness to handle politically sensitive probes. The first review the spokesperson referred to is of Secret Service expenditures at Trump’s golf course in Scotland, which was published in March 2020, but that investigation was launched many months before Cuffari became the inspector general.

The spokesperson cited Cuffari’s history as a mid-level civil servant across a variety of Republican and Democratic administrations as evidence that he is not partisan. The spokesperson left unmentioned Cuffari’s preceding six years as an advisor to Republican Governors Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey in Arizona.

Cuffari’s deputy and chief of staff, Kristen Fredricks, also emailed POGO that “you may be interested in related information” and provided a link to a December report commissioned by Cuffari’s office with a private law firm that investigated his subordinates for “undermining” him. That $1.4 million examination of Cuffari’s employees included investigating them for their complaints about Cuffari to Congress and a council of inspectors general—communications that are constitutionally and legally protected regardless of motive.

The revelations regarding the scuttled probes come as the Government Accountability Office is poised to release a review of Cuffari’s office, which will be the focus of an April 21 House Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Congress has also raised questions about the office and Cuffari’s leadership. In a March 2020 letter to Cuffari, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote that he had concerns about “the willingness of the office to conduct in-depth examinations of sensitive topics.”