The State Department's IG may need to be replaced

The U.S. State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded in a report released Thursday that two senior political appointees routinely harassed career officials they deemed insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump.

The 34-page report, which followed a lengthy investigation, found that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kevin Moley and Mari Stull, a former senior advisor, berated career staffers in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs.

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In an email response to a request for comment, Stull told Foreign Policy that the inspector general’s “report focuses on false and silly allegations by career bureaucrats who hate President Trump.”

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Moley issued a lengthy rebuttal in the appendix and elsewhere in the report, denying some of the specific charges leveled against him.

“[T]he behavior attributed to me regarding raising my voice, berating employees, and contributing to a hostile work environment does not represent who I am or who I have ever been,” he wrote. He said there were “countless” officials who could attest to the fact that “the behavior attributed to me in this report is not reflective of their experience.”

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The inspector general did not directly address Foreign Policy’s report that Stull had compiled a loyalty list. But it alleged that Stull retaliated against career officials perceived as politically disloyal and that she’d referred to her colleagues in the IO Bureau as the “swamp” on her personal Twitter account.

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The inspector general “found evidence of leadership and management deficiencies and mistreatment of career employees in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs,” according to the report.

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“Nearly every employee interviewed by OIG raised concerns about the leadership of IO and the treatment of staff,” the report said.

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“These inappropriate practices included disrespectful and hostile treatment of employees, accusations against and harassment of career employees premised on claims that they were ‘disloyal’ based on their perceived political views, and retaliation associated with conflicts of interest.”

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The investigation, which began in July 2018, involved the review of thousands of emails and other relevant documents and interviews with more than 40 current and former IO employees. The Office of Special Counsel is also conducting a separate investigation into the allegations of political targeting.

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The report alleged Stull, who had previously worked for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), retaliated against a State Department official who had refused to give her legal advice in a private matter related to a claim Stull had filed against the FAO before she entered the State Department.

The official, who was the department’s recognized expert on food security, was abruptly removed from the U.S. delegation to the U.N. General Assembly.

Stull’s “attempts to remove job responsibilities” from the State Department employee “appear likely to have been based on her belief that the [individual] did not provide her with sufficient assistance in her private employment dispute.”

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In another incident in April 2018, the report claimed Stull circumvented a mid-level employee’s supervisors to ask for information on a country’s contributions to the U.N. “Ms. Stull did not believe the data provided was accurate, called the work product ‘garbage,’ and threw it at another employee,” the report said.

“[W]orking with Ms. Stull involved ‘six to eight hostile interactions per day,’” one employee told the OIG, according to the report.

  Goreign Policy

Just following the example of her dear leader.

Moley routinely criticized staffers for relatively mundane perceived infractions, such as taking too long to purchase a flag for Stull’s office. He also allegedly upbraided another staffer for failing to secure him a first-class seat on a work trip.

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Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for Moley to be removed from his post. “Today’s report confirms what we feared: ‘disrespectful and hostile’ treatment of career employees at the State Department,” he said in a statement.

“Let’s be clear: these actions are prohibited by law and they are offensive. They happened more than a year ago with no consequences. And Assistant Secretary Kevin Moley, who is somehow still running the bureau, appears to have done nothing to stop this vindictive culture.

“Ultimately, of course, the buck stops with Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo, who continues to employ Mr. Moley as part of his senior leadership team. Mr. Moley should resign or be fired,” he said.

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“The Department will provide a corrective action plan as recommended by the OIG within 60 days,” [a State Department] spokesperson said, adding that David Hale, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, “is already working directly with the bureau to provide guidance, counsel employees, and improve leadership and management.”

The spokesperson also said the State Department would prepare a “corrective action plan” for Moley after a final review of the inspector general’s report.