We sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel requesting it open an investigation into potential violations of the Hatch Act by Mick Mulvaney—the director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting White House chief of staff—as well as by Ambassador Gordon Sondland for engaging in prohibited political activity. Mulvaney and Sondland appear to have used their official authority to attempt to sway an upcoming election, and if substantiated, this would be a violation of the Hatch Act.
Under a little-known criminal provision that applies to “any person,” Mulvaney’s and Sondland’s acts may also criminally implicate President Donald Trump if the evidence establishes that Trump directed federal officials to take actions that constitute Hatch Act violations.
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Congress shouldn’t buy these phony cost projections and compound the program’s problems, based on a phony buy-in price by buying more F-35s before testing is complete.
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The contradictory statements in the EPA’s response have implications for environmental groups’ suit against the EPA, likely strengthening their claim that the agency’s rulemaking process violated the law.
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There has been much ink spilled and many hours of cable television dedicated in recent days to the issue of family members of high-profile political figures using their familial connections for personal gain. Sadly, this phenomenon is all too common, and poses serious ethical concerns.
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Meeting the Challenges of Today
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Over the past 38 years, the Project On Government Oversight has worked to stymie corruption in our government so the American people could be confident that decisions being made in Washington are aimed at benefiting them. Over those almost four decades of work, the fight has gotten more difficult as the country has faced new and growing challenges. Read about POGO's accomplishments and impact in 2018.
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Upcoming
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On Saturday, November 9th, the Alexandria Film Festival is hosting a screening of the documentary film Who Killed Lt. Van Dorn? in Alexandria, Virginia. The poignant picture of one family's tragedy uncovers a long history of negligence and institutional failings that led to the fatal crash of a 53E helicopter, the deadliest aircraft in the military. New POGO staffer Jason Paladino will be on a panel discussion following the film. Tickets are available through the Alexandria Film Festival; cost: $12.50 online, $15 at door.
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POGO & Whistleblowers
POGO has a long history of working with whistleblowers and protecting their rights. We believe that whistleblowers are our first line of defense against corruption and abuse by the federal government. We’ve spent years protecting these truth-tellers and the mechanisms to hold government accountable, and today we’re seeing why all of that work matters.
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Whistleblowing is not a crime—in many cases, it is a legally-protected right. This interactive quiz can help you learn more about your whistleblower rights and protections as a federal sector employee.
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It is possible to fight wrongdoing from within without sacrificing your career. This survival guide, intended to help and empower conscientious government employees when they encounter wrongdoing in the workplace, covers what federal sector employees should know before blowing the whistle.
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We distilled our survival guide into this e-course, delivering key lessons and tips to your inbox each week.
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POGO in the News
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She also said she would extend the ban to any government contractor with more than $5 million in annual federal contracts, citing a report from the nonpartisan watchdog Project on Government Oversight that found the largest defense contractors hired more than 380 former defense officials and military officers within two years of leaving government.
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Legal experts viewed the letter as a significant development.
"I don't think I've ever seen a letter like this, and I've been doing this for a while," tweeted Danielle Brian, who directs the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that focuses on government wrongdoing. "Pay attention: these are our Inspectors General doing their job well and warning us of wrongdoing."
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, tweeted, "It [has] been clear since as soon as we saw the original OLC opinion on the whistleblower complaint that DOJ's analysis was designed to reach a foreordained result — and not a neutral assessment of the ICIG's analysis. But kudos to the IGs for publicly pushing back in this letter."
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Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, also said the OGE had been too slow to act. Amey said new guidelines could come from the rule-making process, but in the meantime, he said officials should proceed cautiously.
“Legal defense funds and pro bono legal services offered to any government employee, including the president, raise a host of conflict of interest and ethics questions that require answers,” Amey said. “The Office of Government Ethics is seeking advice and might have a rule or guidance in 2020, but government ethics officials are facing this problem now, and any decisions about receiving money or services should be handled with the public interest in mind.”
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More training and clear performance metrics for investigators are also in the works, Bonzanto said. Recent efforts to train OAWP investigators were controversial.
According to the Project on Government Oversight, OAWP spent roughly $300,000 on training for its investigators in September, which attendees described as “totally useless.” POGO also documented a harried process that OAWP took to procure and conduct this training, which led to avoidable and unnecessary costs.
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“Every member of Congress faces a conflict where there is potential for them to be conducting oversight that could be problematic to them,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. “It’s how they manage that tension.”
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The Securities and Exchange Commission must approve all PCAOB regulations, and chooses the five-member board. Unusually for the federal government, those members are paid competitively. The PCAOB chair is among the highest-paid government officials, at $672,676 per year, and other members get over half a million each. “It was supposed to be lucrative enough that you could get people used to a lifestyle to come in and act with integrity,” says Steele.
It didn’t really work out that way. A recent report from the Project on Government Oversight revealed that the Big Four have mismanaged 31 percent of all public-company audits surveyed since 2009. But that has translated into precious little enforcement—only 18 actions in the 16-year life span of the board, a little over one per year. Fines have totaled just $6.5 million, barely a blip next to the Big Four’s billions in annual revenue.
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"It's always concerning to see congressional oversight provisions weakened. Congress has a responsibility to make sure taxpayer dollars are being spent effectively," Dan Grazier, a military fellow with the Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Examiner. "So to see two senators take any steps to weaken their own ability to do the job the voters of their states elected them to do is troubling."
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The impeachment case has brought forward many questions about whistleblowers, inspectors general, relations with Congress and independence. A few days back a group of former intelligence community IGs posted a letter at the Project on Government Oversight to Congress expressing support for the whistleblower process. Federal News Network’s Nicole Ogrysko caught up with one of the signatories, former National Reconnaissance Office inspector general Eric Feldman for Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
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Danielle Brian, executive director of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, noted that Office of Legal Counsel opinions are judgments of the Justice Department that are not binding. “I was very happy to see such an authoritative takedown on an OLC opinion,” she said. The “[Inspector General] community rising up in response” to an Office of Legal Counsel opinion was important for the public to see because “this is not a community of public officials that search out this kind of conflict.”
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The Washington Free Beacon
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While Biden's lawyer said his client has not made a dime off of his business relationship with BHR Partners, government watchdogs aren't buying it.
"I'm going to guess Hunter Biden has had the opportunity to trade in on his name in the United States," said Scott Amey, general counsel at the nonprofit watchdog Project on Government Oversight. "And it really is questionable to cash in with foreign governments, especially those that have an adversarial approach and philosophy to the United States."
Biden has acknowledged, through his lawyer, that he invested $420,000 in BHR to purchase a 10 percent stake in the fund in 2017. As long as Biden retains his stake, he stands to profit from the company's performance. Amey said that while many people make money lobbying for U.S. clients, Biden crossed a line by working with a hostile foreign country, calling his decision to pursue a business deal with China "a head scratcher" that "raises serious questions about his decision making process."
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In 2012, President Barack Obama issued a presidential policy directive that spelled out an appeals process for intelligence employees who face retaliation. Employees must first go to the inspector general of the agency that employs them, who then reviews the allegation of retaliation. If the agency IG dismisses it, whistleblowers are entitled to “an external” review before a panel of three inspectors general.
But even if the IG or a review panel sides with the whistleblower and recommends “corrective action,” such as reinstatement, that doesn’t mean anything will change.
It’s up to the head of the whistleblower’s agency to make that call.
“So retaliation is prohibited but it’s hard to enforce and there’s no penalty if you break that law,” Elizabeth Hempowicz told WhoWhatWhy. Hempowicz is director of public policy for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “It’s really ridiculous.”
POGO has recommendations for strengthening protections for intelligence community whistleblowers, bringing the rules more in line with how other federal whistleblowers are treated. One recommendation is to “consolidate the law” in one place, and “simplify it” so “you don’t have to have an advanced degree to understand your legal protections,” Hempowicz says.
Enforcement provisions that apply to retaliation against whistleblowers also should be part of the law, she adds. And whistleblowers whose complaints are dismissed by an internal process should have the ability to seek redress for retaliation in a federal circuit court, as other federal workers may do.
“Congress wrote the law with the intention that the executive branch would figure out how to enforce it,” Hempowicz says. “When we are talking about the value of the intelligence community and the value that whistleblowers bring in terms of [congressional] oversight, that was a big mistake.”
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi originally hoped a Donald Trump impeachment inquiry could be wrapped up just in time for families to sit down and enjoy their Thanksgiving dinner.
Bill Weitz, however, had a much different message on Sunday. Eliot Engel's chief of staff was joined by Project on Government Oversight executive director Danielle Brian to tell members of Northwest Bronx Indivisible that such an effort likely won’t be completed that quickly — or maybe even this year.
“During both the Nixon impeachment process and the Clinton impeachment process, there was an investigation that took, in fact, a year,” Brian said, connected remotely by video. “In the case of the Clinton administration, it took four years of investigating by Ken Starr before the House actually received his investigations and moved toward a vote.”
But the laws stemming from the Nixon Watergate scandal that allowed special counsels like Starr to investigate presidents no longer exist, Brian said. Because of that, the House has turned itself into a sort of grand jury, for the lack of a better term, interviewing a number of witnesses behind closed doors.
“The House has just got going on what took years in previous administrations,” Brian said. “The best way to compare them right now is like a grand jury, where they are collecting information, and then after that there will be a vote.”
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An inherent conflict of interest exists “when a former regulator represents a firm being examined or investigated,” Cipperman stated.
Cipperman cited a 2013 report by The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) titled “Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Door at SEC Creates Risk of Regulatory Capture,” which outlines the scope of the problem.
The POGO report argues that former SEC employees “routinely help corporations try to influence SEC rulemaking, counter the agency’s investigations of suspected wrongdoing, soften the blow of SEC enforcement actions, block shareholder proposals, and win exemptions from federal law.”
“At the very least, we would recommend a 12-month cooling-off period before a private firm could hire a former regulator and an outright ban if the firm is currently under investigation,” Cipperman said.
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The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis will hold a hearing on Tuesday entitled “Dark Money and Barriers to Climate Action.”
[...] Witnesses include: Justin Farrell, Professor, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Naomi Oreskes, Professor, Harvard University; Morton Rosenberg, Congressional Scholar, Project on Government Oversight, formerly of the Congressional Research Service; and Dylan Tanner, Executive Director & Co-Founder, Influence Map.
Witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing will discuss the latest research on what they call “dark money climate obstruction” and what lessons can be learned from past efforts to combat “corporate deceit.”
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