ONE INSPECTOR GENERAL, TWO INSPECTOR GENERALS, THREE INSPECTOR GENERALS- MORE?
So now it comes out that Obama has fired, or is about to fire, THREE Inspector Generals---all of whom have allegedly acted adversely to the interests of the President or his friends.
Time for a special prosecutor.
WALPIN UPDATE
The President fires Walpin in violation of a law he co-sponsored. He attracts criticism from his own party,most notably Senator Claire McCaskill. Wait---the President has learned how to unscramble eggs, according to media reports. After the fact he issued a letter to Congress enumerating his 'reasons' for firing Walpin (as we said recently , the President sought, and obtained forgiveness):
"Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who had raised questions about the firing Tuesday, released a statement Wednesday in light of the letter saying the president's reasons are "substantial" and the decision to remove Walpin "appears well-founded." She said the letter puts the White House in "full compliance" with the law, which requires the president to provide an explanation before firing an inspector general.Walpin, though, concluded that his firing stems from bad blood between him and the board, as well as with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson -- an Obama supporter whom he had investigated for alleged misuse of federal funds. He said his performance at the May meeting drew criticism because he issued two reports critical of the board. In one, he criticized the settlement reached in the Johnson case; in the other, he criticized the use of millions of dollars for a program at the City University of New York."The board at that meeting was clearly angry at my temerity," he said. "
So, the letter wasn't timely; as for the reasons, as reported in the Washington Post, they don't stand up to scrutiny- reports a real time witness:
IG witness Blows Up White House Excuse
By QHillyer on June 17, 2009 into Water Cooler
"We have found an exclusive witness who directly contradicts multiple aspects of the official White House explanation for firing AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin. Separately, one part of the White House explanation treads on exceedingly shaky ground that raises the specter of improper age discrimination.
President Barack Obama's highly unusual move to fire an inspector general has drawn bipartisan inquiries from Members of both the House and Senate who are worried about protecting the independence of inspectors general. In response, White House Special Counsel Norman Eisen made a number of allegations against Mr. Walpin in a letter to Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). Many of the Eisen letter's charges are rather vague (“he had engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct”; “Mr. Walpin had become unduly disruptive to agency operations”).
Two allegations are more specific. 1)There was a “May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.” 2)“We further learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation's headquarters, insisting upon working form his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation's Board.” Mr. Walpin dispute these statements, as might be expected. But now, in a Washington Times exclusive, so does another official who was a first-hand witness at several of the key meetings involved. The witness, whose bona fides are unimpeachable, is on the agency's payroll, and thus spoke on grounds of anonymity. The Washington Times contacted him through our own research, without Mr. Walpin's knowledge or suggestion.
The second issue is simpler to explain, so let's start there. In January, Mr. Walpin, 77, informed then-President George W. Bush's administration that he would be resigning his post, largely because he and his wife of 52 years had tired of his weekly commute away from his home with her in New York to the offices in Washington, D.C. He claims, and others confirm, that several career staff members subsequently talked him out of resigning, saying that they were proud of the work they were doing under him, and that they suggested he could often just telecommute from New York. When he accepted their pleading and decided to stay, one staff member told the Times today, “Everybody was pleased. He really had taken charge of the office and gave it a sense of mission that everybody felt proud of.” A witness at a subsequent meeting among Mr. Walpin and the agency's general counsel, Frank Trinity, and acting CEO, Nicola Goren, confirms Mr. Walpin's account – namely, that Mr. Trinity and Ms. Goren said they had no objection to the telecommuting arrangement and that (in Mr. Walpin's recounting of it) “there is no reason why it can't work.” Mr. Walpin told the Times that a standing audit committee of the agency's board – consisting of chairman Alan Solomont, Vice Chairman Steven Goldsmith, and board member Eric Tanenblatt – lightly questioned the arrangement at one meeting, but agreed to “let's see how it works.” After that, he said, “I never heard a whimper” of complaint about the arrangement from the board or anybody else. “I never heard an objection.” Again, the witness largely corroborates his account. The witness was not at the original meeting with the audit committee, but attended several later full board meetings in which Mr. Walpin mentioned his telecommuting arrangement without a single objection being raised. Furthermore, both Mr. Walpin and the independent witness said Mr. Walpin always was extremely accessible regardless of where he was working that day, and that the board never indicated otherwise. Independently, both volunteered that Mr. Walpin had made clear the telecommuting would last on a trial basis only through June anyway, at which time they would review the set-up to see how well it was working. So much for Mr. Walpin “insisting” on telecommuting “over the objections of the Corporation's Board.”
Now let's examine the second item of contention, the May 20 meeting at which Mr. Walpin allegedly was “confused” and “disoriented.” Before discussing the actual events of the meeting, consider several points. First the allegation comes awfully close to profiling Mr. Walpin through reference to characteristics often thought to be age-related. By questioning his “capacity to serve” without establishing a pattern of such alleged behavior or providing any medical report confirming a lack of “capacity,” the White House skirts dangerously close to illegal age discrimination. It is worth noting that nobody ever alleged that such a pattern of disorientation existed. Even if “confusion” did occur at one meeting, that does not constitute grounds for dismissing an independent IG absent other evidence of incapacity. An IG is by law an independent, apolitical official who can be removed only for just cause. Through several lengthy interviews with the Washington Times and numerous television and radio appearances since his dismissal, Mr. Walpin has proved to be mentally sharp as a tack. With not a single suggestion to the contrary on any other known occasion, this citation of incapacity is scurrilous and, arguably, defamatory. Indeed, congressional staff might ask if it could be grounds for a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
That said.... what did, actually, happen at the meeting? By the staff member/witness's account, later independently confirmed by Mr. Walpin, the IG had been working around the clock before the meeting, overseeing reports and reactions thereto concerning a case in Sacramento embarrassing to a close Obama ally and a case in New York highly embarrassing to board itself of the Corporation for National and Community Service. By both independent accounts, Mr. Walpin opened the meeting by chastising the board for particularly weak oversight of the grants, involving the Teaching Fellows program of the City University of New York. By both accounts, the board met Mr. Walpin's report with considerable hostility and repeated interruptions, during which the questions ranged without much logical order over several different topics. At some point, the board asked Mr. Walpin to leave the room for 15 minutes while discussing the matter in private. When Mr. Walpin returned, he found his papers out of order. The witness confirms that Mr. Walpin asked for time to get his papers back in their proper order, but was denied that courtesy. “I was also denied time to review my notes,” Mr. Walpin said. Mr. Walpin continues: “There was no inability on my part to express myself before I was asked to leave for 15 minutes. After, there was indeed one question I didn't understand, because so many different items were on the table at once. I also felt physically ill in the middle of that meeting, and indeed was very ill that night. But even if I appeared to others to be confused that one time , that was based on just one occasion out of hundreds [of communications with the board]. Two weeks after that I had a long telephone meeting with the [audit] committee. The only confusion that existed then was the committee's confusion about its own duties.”
The witness, who agreed that Mr. Walpin and the board “weren't connecting” at the meeting after the board hectored him and denied him time to get his notes back in order, agrees that never before or since has he seen Mr. Walpin the slightest bit “confused.” “Was Barack Obama 'incapacitated' because he got confused once and said there are 56 states?” asked Mr. Walpin. “Of course not. Do I lack the capacity to serve because of one occasion where they were hostile to me? That's baloney.”
Mr. Walpin notes one other anomaly. On Tuesday June 9, just one day before the White House first asked him to step down, the agency asked him to make a speech on June 23 in San Francisco to a conference of some 2,000 staff members and grantees. The invitation, he said, was delivered by Gretchen Van De Veer, director of the Office of Leadership Development and Training at the Corporation for National and Community Service. “They begged me to come,” he said. “Why would they do that if they thought I am incapacitated?” Previous Washington Times editorials have shown the highly suspicious nature of President Obama's move to fire Mr. Walpin. Today's witness adds fuel to those suspicions about the White House's motivations and propriety in this affair."
THE FINAL WORD
Here's an angle on Obama's actions against Walpin, specifically, and IGs in general, that most people wouldn't realize, unless you worked in the field, as I have:
Obama is a 'former' "community organizer"---community organizers work closely with non-profits (like Mayor Johnson's "St. HOPE Academy"), and non-profits are always, always running into headaches with Inspector General types. Maybe our President (or those close to him) had a close, unhappy encounter or two with IG types in the past, and now he is evening the score.
V is for Vendetta.
Or maybe M is for Michelle?
Stay tuned...as Drudge says: "developing".
For the first time, the President has his hands tied to a clearly illegal act. The abrupt and suspect termination of Inspector General Walpin, as it was conducted by the President and his staff, violates the provisions of the Inspector General Act that Obama himself voted for while he was Senator Obama! In this he has outdone John Kerry who voted "for the war in Iraq before he voted against it." The magnitude of this folly---or more likely, breathtaking arrogance and disregard for the law and/or anything that happened preceding his election to the Presidency is truly beyond anything we have seen any President do since Nixon. Among other things, President Obama violated the notice (advise and consent) requirements to Congress and the statutorily required time line. Even top Democrats have concluded the President violated the law.
