A recently created rule intended to block the Justice Department from thwarting the efforts of its own internal watchdog would be killed off under President Obama’s budget proposal.
A provision imposed in the so-called “CRomnibus” Congress passed in December forbade Justice from using taxpayer funds to block the work of its inspector general.
The same provision does not appear in the budget plan the White House made public Monday. The administration says it’s not necessary.
In its explanation for removing that language, the White House said it was “unaware of any specific materials” that the Justice inspector general “believed to be necessary to its reviews, but to which the Office of Inspector General has not been granted access” — a statement that left Rep. Mick Mulvaney incredulous.
“It’s just not possible that that’s a true statement,” the South Carolina Republican said after reading the president’s explanation aloud during a committee hearing Tuesday. He said he was “surprised” to see the Obama administration deny knowledge of the oversight disagreements at the Justice Department.
In the few weeks it has been in place, the rule has been “helpful,” Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House Oversight Committee Tuesday.
In the past, the FBI — which is part of the Justice Department — has stalled the release of requested documents by insisting it must first review records to determine whether they contain information the watchdog isn’t legally entitled to receive. Horowitz argued that practice was a violation of federal law.
“The Obama administration wants to use government money to obstruct oversight,” said Tom Fitton, president of the conservative accountability group Judicial Watch. “They don’t want independent oversight of the Justice Department or the FBI.”
Fitton said the White House’s move was just the latest in a series of attempts to shield the Justice Department from scrutiny and said Obama’s reversal of the measure drew attention to the agency’s ongoing violation of it.
“When it comes to corruption in the Obama administration, the Department of Justice is where it’s at,” he said.
The agency has faced a barrage of public criticism in recent years, including outrage over the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and concerns about warrantless wiretaps on Associated Press reporters.
Instead of attempting to fix the problem through the appropriations process, Congress may be better served by addressing unclear areas of the federal Inspectors General Act, such as privacy or attorney-client privilege concerns, said Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
“Even if the Department of Justice inspector general ultimately obtained the materials it requested, it’s obvious there are still disagreements about the authority of inspectors general throughout the federal government,” Smallberg said.
Dan Epstein, president of the transparency advocacy group Cause of Action, said the White House sent a message with its decision to pull the provision.
“By removing it, the president essentially said that he does not think there’s an oversight issue,” Epstein said.
Still, the appropriations bill language has little potency because the act of withholding documents is “revenue-neutral,” meaning such obstruction presumably poses no cost to the government, Epstein noted.
What’s more, language in the Inspectors General Act that protects some Justice Department information involved in undercover operations or criminal investigations may actually empower the FBI to block some document requests, he said.
