Another GOP hearing SNAFU

They're good at hanging themselves in House hearings.

Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari testified before the House Oversight Committee in a hearing on Tuesday that was supposed to be about staffing the border patrol, but took a turn as many of the Democrats on the panel grilled Cuffari about information regarding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who is the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, joined the hearing and grilled Cuffari regarding past allegations he had altered reports from his office and did not alert Congress in a timely fashion that the Secret Service was not complying with DHS information requests.

“Your duty under the Inspector General Act is to immediately report flagrant and serious abuses that are taking place. You were aware, at least as early as May of 2021, that the Secret Service had erased thousands of text messages that were sent before and during the January 6th violent attack on the Capitol, the Congress, and the vice president,” Raskin began, adding:

But you failed to notify Congress for 14 months, for a year and two months that the Secret Service was refusing to comply with your requests for information. So why didn’t you immediately report as you’re statutorily bound to do these serious and flagrant failures to answer your questions about the disappearance of thousands of texts that were sent during January 6th?

[...]

[W]e have documents showing that just six weeks after the initial request for documents from the Secret Service, you canceled requests to the Secret Service for phone records and text messages. Why did you do that?” Raskin followed up.

“If I recall correctly, and I mentioned during my prepared remarks here, DHS was delaying or denying us access to relevant information,” Cuffari replied.

“But did you report that to Congress at that point or ask for a report to Congress?” Raskin asked.

[...]

"[W]hat I don’t understand is your office revived the request that you nullified six weeks after originally making it. Five months later, in December of 2021 is what the paper trail reveals. But what I don’t understand is your statutory duty to immediately inform Congress about this flagrant abuse.”

[...]

You published your semiannual report where there was going to be a reference to the Secret Service’s obstruction of this investigative path. And you removed that. Why was the reference to the Secret Services obstruction deliberately deleted from the June 22nd semiannual report of the inspector general?” Raskin asked.

[...]

“Did you sign off on the decision to remove this reference from the report?” Raskin insisted.

[...]

“I signed off on the removal and I signed a letter specifically to the January 6th Oversight Committee and to this oversight committee,” Cuffari answered.

“But why did you remove it?” Raskin demanded.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) then jumped in and told Raskin his “time is expiring” and then tried to redirect the hearing the border patrol.

  Mediaite

Luckily, the Freedom Caucus is unable to be embarrassed, because they are incredibly bad at conducting hearings.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

January 6 revelations still coming

Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who staffed the Jan. 6 Committee until April, said on Friday that the White House switchboard connected with the phone of a rioter at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection.

“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” said Riggleman, former senior technical adviser for the committee, according to a clip from CBS’s upcoming episode of “60 Minutes.”

When asked by host Bill Whitaker to confirm that someone in the White House was calling an insurrectionist during the riot, Riggleman said: “On January sixth, absolutely.”

[...]

“I only know one end of that call. I don’t know the White House end, which I believe is more important,” he said.

“But the thing is, the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”

  The Hill

And, Riggleman needs to sell a book. But, thanks for letting us know it now. Can't wait for the next Jan 6 hearings.

A group of employees who work for the internal watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security are calling on President Biden to remove their boss, saying they’ve lost hope the “ship will right itself.”

The request comes after numerous congressional panels have asked DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside from various investigations after he failed to alert lawmakers in a timely manner that Secret Service text messages for Jan. 6 had been “erased.”

An anonymous letter shared by the Project on Government Oversight was signed by “concerned DHS OIG employees representing every program office at every grade level” who added that “for fear of retaliation, we cannot identify ourselves.”

  The Hill

UPDATE: