Free Republic

The State Department’s inspector general has agreed to investigate the program that allowed former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton to hire one of her key advisors, Huma Abedin, for government work even as she was also employed by a private firm, a senator revealed Friday. Inspector General Steve A. Linick also said he wasn’t aware of Mrs. Clinton’s or Ms. Abedin’s use of a non-government email account to conduct official business, and said that’s generally been frowned upon at the department. He pointed to a 2012 report that instructed an embassy to stop using a commercial email system as evidence. And...

The State Department had no permanent inspector general—the lead watchdog charged with uncovering misconduct and waste—during Hillary Clinton’s entire tenure as secretary, leaving in place an acting inspector who had close ties to State Department leadership. ...

In the latest of many scandals involving U.S. aid for Afghan social issues, tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have been wasted on programs to supposedly assist women in the Islamic country escape repression yet we have no idea if it’s made a difference because there’s no accountability or follow up. During a two-year period from 2011 to 2013 the U.S. blew $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs and initiatives to support Afghan women though details of how the money was spent and the effectiveness of the costly experiments aren’t available, according to a federal audit. The cash flowed...

The “independent” watchdogs that are supposed to root out waste, fraud and corruption inside U.S. government agencies often help cover it up, according to a scandalous newspaper exposé that reveals sometimes they actually become the lapdogs of the agencies they’re charged with overseeing. Published this month by the capital area’s conservative newspaper, the four-part series exposes the state of inspectors general tasked with keeping an eye on the government. In all there are 72 inspectors general—with heads appointed by the president—thanks to a decades-old law that passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress. The idea is to have a completely...

The Obama Justice Department endangered public safety by allowing a renowned weapons smuggler to continue working for Mexican drug cartels even after the agency had more than enough evidence to indict him, according to a federal audit made public this week. As if this weren’t bad enough, the case is all the more outrageous because it involves the same preposterous strategy the administration used in the disastrous gun-running operation known as Fast and Furious. That once-secret program allowed weapons from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement...

A report from the Veterans' Administration Office of Inspector General identified at least 1,700 veterans at the agency's beleaguered Phoenix clinic who were not properly registered on waiting lists, putting them "at risk of being forgotten or lost." The independent report, released Wednesday, confirmed recent allegations that VA locations have been relying on sketchy scheduling practices amid treatment delays, some of which have resulted in the deaths of vets.

Former HUD-OIG Special Agent In Charge Indicted on Mortgage Fraud Charges Herschell Harvell, Jr., 53, Conyers, Georgia, made his initial appearance in federal court on charges of making false statements to a bank to obtain a mortgage loan and conspiring to obstruct an investigation into his real estate transactions by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD-OIG). Until he was terminated in 2013, Harvell was the Special Agent in Charge of HUD-OIG’s Atlanta office, which encompasses several southeastern states. Harvell’s co-defendant and nephew, Tavus A. Wright, 32, Milledgeville, Georgia, also made his initial appearance...

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz has published a memorandum to Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole about “challenges” facing the Justice Department. Among the list of challenges: misconduct and malfeasance by DOJ employees and units which PJ Media has been reporting about for years. That these instances of misconduct were included in Horowitz’s report infers that Holder’s Department has either taken inadequate action to address the behavior, or has taken no action at all. Based on what sources inside DOJ are saying, I suspect the latter. The report provides material which senators on...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today. The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify...

Lack of money and testing delays mean NASA will not be able to send astronauts into orbit until at least 2021, according to a report released Aug. 15 by the NASA Office of Inspector General. “NASA plans to delay delivery of several systems required to ‘human rate’ the Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and as a result, the Agency does not expect the spacecraft to be available for crewed operations until at least 2021,” said Paul K. Martin, NASA’s inspector general. Under current funding levels, astronauts will be limited to orbital missions, because the systems necessary for surface exploration have...

An audit by theDepartment of Energy’s Inspector General found that the persistent weak demand for electric vehicles harmed the deployment and timeliness of a $135 million-plus taxpayer funded charging network, which spun a cycle of excessive grants and project expansion, that led to an enormous waste of public money. The investigators, led by IG Gregory Friedman, determined that conditions for reimbursement to Ecotality, Inc. (and its subsidiaries) for the EV charging demonstration project were “very generous,” although not explicitly prohibited under federal regulations. “While we acknowledge that the Department had maintained and archived award documentation, an independent reviewer cannot understand...

The acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security flouted nepotism rules by employing his wife, and took multiple jaunts, at taxpayers’ expense, to Florida, according to documents obtained by The Post. The documents show at least four trips that Charles Edwards — the acting inspector general assigned to root out fraud in the agency’s $40 billion budget — took from DC to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, where he was earning a computer and information-sciences degree at Nova Southeastern University, in 2011 and 2012. Travel receipts submitted by Edwards list the university’s name next to the rate charged by...

Being without friends is no fun. Remember that scene from The Bride of Frankenstein, the one with the old hermit? “Alone, bad,” the monster noted. “Friend, good.” Of course, Frank burned down the old hermit’s cottage, but that is the chance one takes when breaking bread and smoking cigars with a big, strong stranger who has a bolt through his neck. There are days when Uncle Sam must feel that no one likes him, what with people taking leaks on him, waging war against him, or burning down his houses. So, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she decided...

One of the most important and so-far least noted threads in the IRS sandal cloth is the inexplicable remark made by Austan Goolsbee, at the time the Chairman of the White Council of Economic Advisors about the taxes paid by the Koch brothers - arch villains in the Manichean delusions of the American left - that would require his knowledge of their confidential tax returns. Did the White House senior staff illegally browse through the tax records of their political enemies? The Washington Free Beacon has been trying to find out, and uncovered an interesting response: CJ Ciaramella reports: The...

Refuting Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department's inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted compared to 292 conservative groups. In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure. The Wednesday letter to the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee punched a huge hole in Democratic...

Among all the unanswered questions about the IRS’s illegal targeting of conservative organizations, one is most crucial: Who ordered this extreme scrutiny? Amazingly, IRS inspector general J. Russell George, responsible for the investigation asking those questions about the IRS, has testified that he did not obtain that information. Details of that testimony are interesting. Representative Tom Graves (R., Ga.) asked, “Have you asked the individuals who ordered them to use this extra scrutiny to punish, or penalize, or postpone, or deny?” George turns around to confer with his assistant. Just the fact that the inspector general had to confer to...

The mess the IRS has gotten itself in has been fascinating. Having all these commentators writing about the Service from high above the earth offers great entertainment. I have been working with the Service since 1979. Let me offer you some first-hand perspective. Let me say, first of all, despite the IRS’s horrible reputation there are worse. At least in California, the Franchise Tax Board (income tax) and State Board of Equalization (sales tax) are eons worse in demeanor or concern for the taxpayer. The IRS has vastly improved its attitude in phone conversations over the past ten years, even...

While the Obama Administration scrambles to respond to a host of multi-agency scandals, five cabinet level agencies are still without Inspector Generals. These agencies are the Departments of State, Interior, Labor, Defense, and Homeland Security. The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Agency for International Development (USAID) are also lacking IG’s. “The reason that’s significant is because there are specific independent capacities that an appointed and confirmed IG has that somebody who has not been confirmed does not have,” Americans for Limited Government spokesman Richard Manning told Breitbart News. “They don’t have the same flexibility,” he explained. An Inspector...

The IRS has admitted to harassing conservative groups seeking tax exempt status, singling out for extra special scrutiny organizations which featured “patriot” or “tea party” designations in their name. We now know that a number of these groups were forced to withdraw their applications, being unable or unwilling to continue what in some cases had become a 3 year battle with the corrupt federal agency. But few in the media have bothered to ask who directed the IRS to engage in this criminal behavior. It has been reported that Senators Chuck Schumer and Al Franken addressed a letter to IRS...

...new information has emerged from both the Treasury Inspector General’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner... The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged. “But between 2010 and 2012 we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving and many of these...