Rep. Jason Chaffetz Tuesday issued subpoenas to two Secret Service employees to compel their testimony about allegations that two agents disrupted a suspicious package investigation at the White House after a night of drinking in early March.
Chaffetz, who chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he was forced to issue the subpoenas because the Homeland Security Department is trying to stymie its investigation into the incident.
Although Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy last week agreed to allow the two agents to testify during a closed-door session of the panel, DHS officials have since requested that the information remain secret while the department’s inspector general continues its investigation, Chaffetz said in a statement Tuesday.
“Those restrictions are unacceptable,” he said. “Under such restrictions, the committee cannot perform its essential duties to evaluate and propose much-needed legislative reforms for this troubled agency.”
Chaffetz said the committee understands the sensitive nature of the Secret Service’s work and has made “every attempt” to perform its oversight duties with those concerns in mind.
“It is disappointing that the department has declined to cooperate,” he said. “We therefore must take the regrettable step of compelling the agents for interviews before the committee.”
A Secret Service spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson issued a lengthy statement calling the subpoenas “unprecedented and unnecessary” and disputing Chaffetz’s contention that department officials aren’t cooperating with his investigation.
“Chairman Chaffetz’s assertion that this Department has been ‘uncooperative’ is simply wrong,” he said.
In fact, he said the department offered a number of Secret Service personnel, including the two that have been subpoenaed, for transcribed interviews with committee staff.
“For reasons that are unclear to me, Chairman Chaffetz and his staff rejected that offer,’ he said.
Johnson also said he is acutely aware of the executive branch’s obligation to appear before Congress to give public testimony, noting that in 2014 he testified before Congress 12 times.
But he said, subordinates, in particular the men and women of the Secret Service charged with protecting the president and the first family, are “different story.”
“Clancy and I must fight to protect them against the visibility, public glare and inevitable second-guessing of a congressional hearing,” Johnson said. “I hope Chairman Chaffetz appreciates this.”
Johnson said he too wants to know what happened the night of March 4 and argued that the department’s inspector general is conducting a thorough investigation into the matter.
“I will continue to work with Chairman Chaffetz and his committee to reach a reasonable accommodation that serves the committee’s need to conduct responsible oversight without compromising the Secret Service’s extraordinary protection mission,” Johnson concluded.
