State Department officials are increasingly uneasy with their new acting inspector general, fearing he has conflicts of interest that could lead him to derail ongoing investigations — including ones into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — while endangering cooperating witnesses.
Politico
You think?
The concerns about Stephen Akard, shared by Democrats in Congress, extend further. Some State Department staffers fear Akard will try to rescind, or otherwise undermine, past investigations conducted by his ousted predecessor, Steve Linick.
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Inside the State Department – even within the inspector general’s own office – concerns over Akard have only grown since he showed up in his new role a few days after Linick’s May 15 firing.
One major reason for the worry: Akard is still keeping his position as the head of the Office of Foreign Missions, a unit whose responsibilities including dealing with the activities of foreign embassies based in the United States. That means that, in theory, he should recuse himself from any inspector general investigation into that office.
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As the head of the Office of Foreign Missions, Akard reports to Bulatao. As the undersecretary of State for management, Bulatao also oversees several other major divisions within the State Department, such as the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Consular Affairs.
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If any of those other units falls under investigation by the inspector general’s office, some State Department officials argue, Akard can’t reasonably expect to play a role in the probe because he also reports to Bulatao. Bulatao is a longtime personal friend and former business partner of Pompeo’s.
Others worry that the presence of Akard, who also has ties to Vice President Mike Pence, will scare off employees who wish to report waste, fraud and abuse. And there are some signs that Akard will face pressure to conform to what Pompeo and his top aides want instead of serving as a traditionally independent watchdog. The secretary, for one, has implied in recent remarks that he wants a subservient inspector general.
A cozy and incestuous administration indeed.
Akard previously worked under Pence when the vice president was governor of Indiana, including advising him on foreign affairs, adding to fears by State Department employees and Democrats that he will try to scuttle investigations that paint the Trump administration in a bad light.
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Akard has offered a “head-scratching” take, a person familiar with the situation told POLITICO. Akard has said that, in reality, [Brian Bulatao [to whom Akard reports], undersecretary of State for management and defender of Linick’s ouster] is not his supervisor, but that his actual boss is Trump, because it’s the president who technically nominated him to serve as the head of OFM.
What? That makes it even worse.
Akard may be prevented by government rules from rescinding past reports. But he could, like Barr, initiate reviews of past investigations in a bid to question their soundness, undermining the public’s faith, not to mention his staff’s morale.
“Everyone’s on alert,” one State Department official said about the overall mood.
Technically, Linick’s firing doesn’t take effect until 30 days have passed. But Linick is reported to have been barred from his office, and Akard has started his new duties.
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The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, the group that coordinates among agency watchdogs, has dispatched staff to help Akard understand his new role and responsibilities, according to the person familiar with the situation. Akard has not yet begun asking substantive questions about ongoing probes or taken any other major steps.
His job depends upon him NOT understanding it.
His new staff have asked him what he will do if instructed by Pompeo or others not to investigate something. His response was that unless there was a very good reason, he would say that such an instruction was inappropriate.
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State Department staffers point out that Akard doesn’t have to end ongoing probes outright to effectively kill them.
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[H]e could reassign the staff looking into them, or simply sit on the findings and not release them.
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A handful of ongoing investigations are of special concern because they relate to Pompeo and in some cases his wife, Susan. One is a probe into whether the Pompeos used State Department aides to run personal errands for them. Another is a look at Pompeo’s effort to ram through arms sales to Saudi Arabia, bypassing lawmakers. A third involves questionable activity in the Office of the Chief of Protocol at the State Department, a section with which Susan Pompeo was frequently in touch.
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Meanwhile, State Department employees who were interviewed for ongoing and past investigations – often under conditions of anonymity – are worried that Akard will track down their identities and share them with Pompeo and others. They fear they will be targeted for professional retribution as a result.
They are right to fear that.
Another State Department staffer predicted that colleagues will shy away from reporting future cases of wrongdoing at the department because of Akard.
“Things will go unnoticed and things will go unchallenged,” the staffer said. “People are going to be fearful because they don’t want their name to show up in the president’s Twitter feed.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
