Behind Closed Doors
- 0 Comments
“Staff doesn’t speak for the committee,” a source on Capitol Hill
explained last week. “The committee speaks for the committee.”
That’s the practical meaning of Senate Rule 29, which has been
invoked regarding the Homeland Security and Government Oversight
Committee investigation into last month’s firing of AmeriCorps
inspector general Gerald Walpin.
The committee’s chairman, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, is
entirely within his prerogative to protect the integrity of the
investigation via Rule 29, which reads, in part:
Any Senator, officer, or employee of the Senate who shall
disclose the secret or confidential business or proceedings of
the Senate, including the business and proceedings of the
committees, subcommittees, and offices of the Senate, shall be
liable, if a Senator, to suffer expulsion from the body; and if
an officer or employee, to dismissal from the service of the
Senate, and to punishment for contempt.
Staffers therefore discuss the investigation at peril of
termination and prosecution, and are understandably skittish when
a reporter walks in the door. (For the record, the deputy press
secretary for the committee revealed nothing more sensitive than
the fact she plays catcher on Lieberman’s staff softball team,
which had a game Friday afternoon at an undisclosed location.)
Rule 29 is in some sense standard operating procedure for Senate
investigations, but it is one of several factors fueling a
palpable distrust between Democratic and Republican staffers on
the Hill as congressional inquiries into the apparent crackdown
on watchdogs move forward — or don’t.
Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill express skepticism of
whether Democrats are genuinely interested in investigating
anything except allegations of wrongdoing by the long-gone Bush
administration. Not all of this skepticism is off-the-record, and
it is by no means limited to the cases of Walpin and two other
former inspectors general.
“You would think the majority would be just as vested as we are
at exposing who knew what and when,” Kurt Bardella, spokesman for
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.),
told a reporter for the Hill last week, regarding a
slow-moving House investigation of the controversial merger
between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. “What exactly is the
majority afraid we’ll find?”
Sharp public criticism of colleagues — in this case, Rep.
Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight
Committee, on which Issa serves as ranking Republican — is not
particularly rare in the fractious House of Representatives.
Decorum and dignity are more the norm on the Senate side of the
Hill, but the fact that Senate Republicans aren’t publicly
denouncing Joe Lieberman doesn’t mean they’re happy with the pace
of his investigation into Walpin’s firing.
The most favorable GOP view of how the Lieberman committee is
proceeding was expressed Friday by a Hill source who used the
word “methodical,” saying that Lieberman and the committee’s
ranking Republican, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, aren’t “looking for
a press hit.” They’re not chasing headlines or, as prosecutors
like to say, they don’t want to try the case in the media.
One Republican clearly unhappy with the Lieberman-Collins
“methodical” approach is Gerald Walpin himself, who made
headlines Friday by
filing a lawsuit seeking reinstatement as IG, accusing the
Corporation for National and Community Service — the agency that
oversees AmeriCorps — and three of its officials of violating
federal law in the process of firing him.
Win or lose, the Walpin lawsuit definitely adds a new angle to
the story, primarily through the legal process known as
“discovery,” whereby the defendants can be required to
disclose…well, just about anything, really. If there is some
document that the plaintiff can convince a judge is relevant to
the case, the defendants will be ordered to hand it over, and
then there are the sworn depositions. These requirements expose
the defendants to legal jeopardy — for perjury, obstruction of
justice and other such “process crimes” — if they don’t fully
and honestly cooperate.
If all this sounds vaguely familiar, perhaps the reader is
recalling a lawsuit, Jones v. Clinton, which led to the
momentous deposition in which the defendant, William Jefferson
Clinton, committed perjury about “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
Of course, as Americans were lectured for months on end,
“everybody lies about sex,” but does everybody lie about firing a
government watchdog whose job is to keep an eye out for “waste,
fraud and abuse” in federal agencies?
Asked about the practical consequences of Walpin’s lawsuit, one
former federal prosecutor familiar with such cases said that
unless the suit is dropped or dismissed, it will eventually push
new information about the case into the public record.
“Eventually” is the key word, as the wheels of justice grind
slowly.
Ironically, as
Byron York of the Washington Examiner has reported,
publicity about scandals at AmeriCorps — especially the taxpayer
money misspent by a charity founded by former NBA star Kevin
Johnson, an Obama ally who is now the Democratic mayor of
Sacramento — was exactly what the administration had hoped to
squelch by firing Walpin.
That move has clearly backfired. In addition to the discovery
process of a federal lawsuit and the Lieberman-Collins
investigation, Walpin’s case is also the subject of a separate
inquiry by Sen. Chuck Grassley — the Iowa Republican regarded as
the Senate’s patron saint of IGs — as well as an
FBI investigation into allegations that someone in Sacramento
deleted e-mails relevant to Walpin’s investigation of Johnson’s
St. HOPE charity.
Beyond that, Walpin’s dismissal was the first of three similar
cases of pressure against IGs, along with the termination of ITC
inspector general Judith Gwynne’s contract and the sudden
retirement of the
Amtrak IG Fred Wiederhold.
Those familiar with the investigations caution against “playing
connect-the-dots” with these three distinct cases. However, some
informed Republican sources are beginning to call attention to
other evidence of a concerted effort to blindfold, muzzle or
neuter watchdogs — especially those who dare to growl at
Democrats.
Why, for instance, did Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) rush through
the House a bill that would give President Obama power to dismiss
five inspectors general — including the IG for the Securities
and Exchange Commission — who under existing law report to the
agency heads?
The IGs themselves have
protested against the Larson bill, which has yet to be
debated in the Senate, and it has not escaped notice on Capitol
Hill that Larson is a prominent “Friend of Chris.” That would be
Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking
Committee. Dodd is under intense scrutiny for a number of
shady-looking activities —
“Chris Dodd Update” has become a regular feature at Professor
Glenn Reynolds’ popular Instapundit blog –
and Dodd is also facing a tough re-election bid next year.
No one on the Hill has yet directly suggested that the Larson
bill — which could effectively muzzle watchdogs at five federal
financial agencies — was specifically intended as assistance to
the embattled chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. But as
liberal bloggers used to say about the Bush administration’s
activities, some Republicans have begun to “question the timing.”
Timing is very important in politics, and both Republicans and
Democrats are beginning to look ahead to the 2010 mid-term
elections. Projections of double-digit unemployment and
mushrooming deficits are already causing some Democratic jitters.
The questions being asked about the IG investigations and Obama’s
promises of “transparency” now dangle like a sword of Damocles
above the heads of Democrats on the Hill.
If Democrats take a “methodical” approach to the investigations,
working behind closed doors with Rule 29 to prevent public
disclosure, they risk Republican accusations — fair or unfair –
that they are “dragging their feet” or worse. On the other hand,
if Democrats begin to express public skepticism about the Obama
administration’s “transparency” rhetoric, they risk repercussions
from the
“Chicago Way” of hardball politics that Team Obama seems to
have brought to Washington.
And at the center of all this nervousness and suspicion stands
the junior senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, who
campaigned last year for Republican “Maverick” John McCain. That
would be the same Joe Lieberman who is now an independent because
left-wingers backed millionaire newcomer Ned Lamont against him
in the 2006 Democratic primary. And Chris Dodd was among the
Democrats who campaigned for Lamont.
Lieberman prides himself on bipartisanship and integrity. Three
weeks ago, he
reacted furiously to an
accusation by the Washington Times that his
committee was failing to pursue the IG investigation. Since then,
the “methodical” Lieberman has said little, while Republican
suspicions have flourished.
Yet Democrats may have suspicions of their own. Given the vicious
treatment the chairman endured from some Democrats three years
ago, one veteran Washington journalist told me last week,
Lieberman “don’t owe those people squat.”
*********
PREVIOUSLY:
July 17:
Amtrak IG: Important Background
July 14:
IG-Gate: Sincere Doubts
July 14:
The Little Scandal That Could
July 9:
Democrats Question AmeriCorps Official’s Stonewall on IG
Case
July 1:
Malkin on IG-Gate: Does the Endangered Species Act Include
Watchdogs?
June 26:
Grassley: Amtrak ‘Systematically Violated’ IG Law
June
25: Eleanor
Acheson: Lobbyist
June 25:
Obama Plays Hardball With
Watchdogs
June 23:
Amtrak IG Probe: Who Is Eleanor Acheson?
June 19:
IG-Gate: Domino Theory
June 18:
AmeriCorps Scandal Won’t Go Away
Soon
