Saturday, December 10, 2011

Former Obama lawyer admits deceiving Congress | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner

Former Obama lawyer admits deceiving Congress | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner: Remember the Gerald Walpin affair? Republican Sen. Charles Grassley does.

Walpin was the inspector general of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the organization that runs the AmeriCorps service program. In June 2009, Walpin received a call from Norman Eisen, who was then the Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform. Eisen told Walpin he had an hour to either resign or be fired.

Eisen's call appeared to violate the 2008 Inspectors General Reform Act, which is designed to protect inspectors general from political interference. The Act requires the president to give Congress 30 days' notice, plus an explanation of cause, before firing an inspector general. In Walpin's case, the White House did neither.

Walpin had made some CNCS political appointees unhappy by tenaciously investigating misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the former NBA star who is now mayor of Sacramento, California and a prominent supporter of President Obama. When Grassley and other lawmakers found out that Walpin had been summarily fired, and that a political motive might be involved, they demanded an explanation.


See original work for more on this and other stories.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Spamming will be removed.

Due to spamming. Comments need to be moderated. Your post will appear after moderated regardless of your views as long as they are not abusive in nature. Consistent abusive posters will not be viewed but deleted.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.