inspector general round-up

Looks like Walpin isn’t the only Inspector General the White House is attempting to silence or fire.

Jake Tapper reports:

Behind the scenes, the Treasury Department is embroiled in a disagreement with Neil Barofsky, the watchdog for the $700 billion government bailout Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

As part of his duties performing audits and keeping tracking TARP dollars, Barofsky asked the Treasury Department for some documents about a financial institution receiving tens of billions in taxpayer bailout dollars. The Treasury Department refused to hand them over, “on a specious claim of attorney-client privilege,” Grassley wrote. “It is my further understanding that this disagreement then escalated into broader questions about whether SIGTARP is subject to your direct supervision and direction, which may have been referred outside Treasury for an independent legal opinion.”

“The ability of Inspectors General to secure agency records subject to audit or investigation is essential to ensure the integrity and reliability of their work on behalf of Congress and the American People,” Grassley wrote. “The Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies are held accountable for their actions.”

snip

In a statement, Grassley said, ”The grassroots is furious about the way TARP dollars have been used and what looks like a lack of accountability for this massive infusion of tax dollars. It’s added injury to hear about the Treasury Department putting up hurdles to slow down the work of the watchdog who’s supposed to track the money. One of the biggest lessons of the last year is that the public deserves more transparency and, in turn, accountability from New York and Washington.”

Ed Morrissey from Hot Air wrote:

The firing of Gerald Walpin as Inspector General was not an isolated incident, as the Chicago Tribune reports today. Two more IGs have been dismissed in the past two weeks, and Senator Charles Grassley has started demanding answers. The sudden push to rid the government of independent watchdogs appears to coincide with Barack Obama’s plans to use government spending to get control over more aspects of American life, such as with stimulus spending, the financial sector, and volunteer organizations.

From the original Chicago Tribune article:

The dispute comes as Grassley, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is looking into the abrupt firings within the last week of two other inspectors general – one of whom was fired by the White House and the other by the chair of the International Trade Commission.

Both inspectors general had investigated sensitive subjects at the time of their firings.

Grassley is now concerned about whether a pattern is emerging in which the independence of the government’s top watchdogs — whose jobs were authorized by Congress to look out for waste, fraud and abuse — is being put at risk.

More from HotAir:

The positions themselves indicate where the White House wants to go with its efforts. Barofsky ruffled feathers in April when his watchdog report showed that the Obama administration had placed insufficient safeguards on Porkulus spending. This later caused Joe Biden to shrug and tell the media, “Some people are being scammed already,” as if it wasn’t the job of the administration to stop it from happening. Barofsky now has a leash around his neck, with the White House insisting that he answers only to Treasury.

Sen. Grassley is not having an easy time obtaining answers from the WH about the Walpin firing, as reported by the Washington Examnier:

Norman Eisen, the White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, met with investigators on the staff of Republican Sen. Charles Grassley at Grassley’s offices Wednesday morning. The investigators wanted to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. According to Grassley, Eisen revealed very, very little, refusing to answer many questions of fact put to him. And now Grassley has written a letter to the White House counsel asking for answers.

“Unfortunately,” Grassley writes in a letter sent late Wednesday afternoon to White House counsel Gregory Craig, “Mr. Eisen refused to answer several direct questions posed to him about the representations made in his letter.” Grassley says that since Eisen refused to answer the questions in person, Grassley would submit a dozen of them in writing.

The WH explanation for the firing of Walpin does not ring true, especially now that there are witnesses who refute the smears proposed by the Obama administration. It can be difficult to label someone as senile when you aren’t a medical expert…and there are witnesses to say otherwise.

The White House claims Inspector General Gerald Walpin was effectively away without leave from his Washington office and that he was so “disoriented” and “confused” at a May 20 meeting that it made officials “question his capacity to serve.” An exclusive witness told The Washington Times both charges are baseless.

Mr. Walpin says he had been working around the clock and was becoming ill at the meeting. Still, any confusion, the witness said, stemmed at least as much from the board’s hectoring behavior as from Mr. Walpin’s own doing. Either way, a charge that “disorientation” is enough to “question” an independent official’s “capacity to serve” should rest on more than one incident. Nobody has claimed that Mr. Walpin has shown any confusion, not the slightest bit, before or since that meeting.

The second allegation is groundless as well. Mr. Walpin was not “absent from the Corporation’s headquarters … over the objections of the Corporation’s Board,” as the White House claims. Instead, he had specifically cleared an arrangement to telecommute (from New York to the District office) with the agency’s general counsel and its acting chief executive officer. Our witness was present at the meeting when the arrangement was approved.

Larry Johnson wrote an impassioned post, Obama Out Lettermans Letterman that included a great video of Walpin on Beck that is a must see.

And you’ll love this awesome video from HotAir:

We’ve already covered the case of Gerald Walpin, whose work brought him into conflict with Obama crony Kevin Johnson, now the mayor of Sacramento. The White House and Johnson claim that there is no connection between the two, but this video from Naked Emperor News tells another story: