Two lawmakers warned Aug. 20 that the DHS’s history of blocking its Office of Inspector General could make it harder for the OIG to look into the failed July 13 murder attempt on former President Trump.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) sent a statement to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas criticizing the DHS for not collaborating with the Office of Inspector General and for substantially redacting reports written by DHS Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari.
The most recent example, according to them, was the OIG report on the errors the U.S. Secret Service made at and near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, particularly in how it handled the pipe bomb discovered outside Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s office while she was inside the building. The Secret Service is under DHS’s supervision.
The fact that DHS is so secretive is detrimental to American taxpayers.
Grassley said in a statement, “The Biden-Harris DHS is putting its watchdog on a tight leash by setting unlawful access limits and stalling information sharing. This has made it impossible for the DHS OIG to promptly share its full findings with Congress and the American people.”
“DHS’s widespread lack of openness is bad for taxpayers and very worrying in light of recent contact problems with the Secret Service,” he said.
In a message to Grassley on August 2, Cuffari said that the DHS’s lack of cooperation has made his office work hard for years.
According to the law, since 2021, Cuffari wrote, “My office has regularly reported DHS’s delays and rejections to our requests for information that we need to do our jobs and can legally get.” As a result, there have been “delays in completing and outright rejections of OIG’s requests for records and information.”
In July, congressional officials pointed out similarities between the Secret Service’s mistakes during the pipe-bomb episode on January 6 and the shooting of Trump in Butler Township, Pa., on July 13.
Grassley and Loudermilk said that the DHS’s recent actions to block the release of a highly censored version of the OIG’s report on January 6 are the latest example of their history of blocking. The letter to Mayorkas gave four main examples of times when the DHS stalled or made it difficult for the OIG to get the materials they needed to finish an audit or investigation.
“The department’s acts don’t give them much respect and may hurt people for no reason.”
In a statement, Loudermilk said, “I am very worried that the department would get in the way of what information the DHS OIG gives to Congress or what information the DHS OIG can get during their probes.” “The OIG is separate from Congress and reports directly to them.” The secretary should never get in the way of the Inspector General’s job.
The inquiry into what happened on January 6 by Cuffari started in February 2021, but the head of the Secret Service didn’t get the final report until April 2024 to comment on it. Sources told Blaze News that the DHS wanted to redact the whole report at first. On Capitol Hill, people were furious about that idea.
