Category: Darrell Issa

Bye-Bye, Bardella

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For reasons previously explained, the press secretary for Rep. Darrell Issa was in an untenable position and has now been fired for it:

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) fired Kurt Bardella, one of Capitol Hill’s top press secretaries, after he provided e-mailed correspondence with other journalists to New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich.
Issa, in a statement Tuesday afternoon, said that the “information shared with Mark Leibovich appears to have been limited to Kurt’s own correspondence with reporters,” claiming that the internal workings of the committee — which include sensitive documents — had not been jeopardized.
“Though limited, these actions were highly inappropriate, a basic breach of trust with the reporters it was his job to assist, and inconsistent with established communications office policies,” Issa said in the statement released Tuesday afternoon. “As a consequence, his employment has been terminated.”

(Via Memeorandum.) One of the things that congressional staffers must always keep in mind is that they collect their salaries from the taxpayers, and that they cannot use their positions for personal or purely partisan purposes. If you want to go be a political operative, or if you want to hustle up a freelance income, no problem — but first, quit your job, because you can’t do that other stuff while you’re on the congressional payroll.

In Bardella’s case, it doesn’t appear that he was engaged in anything that compromised his boss, nor do we have any reason to believe that Bardella was hustling a buck or pushing a political agenda. However, any e-mails Bardella received as a result of his position on the congressional staff were official communications — the property of the congressman’s office, and therefore not Bardella’s to do with as he pleased.

By sharing those e-mails with Leibovich, Bardella was violating his official responsibilities. From a more pragmatic perspective, once it became known that Bardella and Leibovich were engaged in a project that excluded other journalists — and, indeed, a project that subjected those journalists’ e-mails to Leibovich’s scrutiny — it compromised Bardella’s standing as an honest broker of information.

Note to my congressional sources: You need never fear exposure for your secret leaks to me. I’m not sure how Politico got wind of Leibovich’s dealings with Bardella, but I’ll carry your secrets to my grave.

Ruh-Roh

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This is bad news any way you slice it:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the powerful Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has launched an inquiry into whether spokesman Kurt Bardella improperly shared e-mails from other reporters with a New York Times reporter writing a book on Washington’s political culture, POLITICO has learned.
Bardella has been cooperating extensively with the Times’s Mark Leibovich on the book, and Issa told POLITICO Monday that he would “get to the bottom” of exactly what Bardella shared with Leibovich.
Aides close to the office say Bardella’s job hangs in the balance of the internal probe.

While I’m resisting the urge to jump to any conclusion about the facts of the situation, if this is true — if Bardella was indeed sharing other reporters’ e-mails with Leibovich — it’s going to be hard for Bardella to keep his job. Those other reporters would raise holy hell about it.

In fact, for a congressional press secretary to be “cooperating extensively” on a project with one reporter might be seen as disadvantaging other reporters who don’t have that kind of relationship. But we don’t have enough facts to make those judgments, so we won’t.

Democrats, Republicans Battle in Oversight Committee Hearing

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The hearing was about a new report from the GAO exposing waste in government:

[Committe Chairman Rep. Darrell] Issa’s panel was discussing the GAO’s biennial report, released this week, on areas with high risk for waste. In its study, Congress’ investigative agency placed the Interior Department’s oversight of oil-and-gas resources on to the list . . .
The study found that Interior’s management of oil-and-gas issues faced challenges in collecting revenue, hiring and training sufficient staff, and in its efforts to reorganize. The department announced last year that it was breaking down what was once known as the Minerals Management Service.

Democrats will fight against any cut to any government program anywhere — except the Pentagon:

[A] House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday to examine ways to trim the budget deficit devolved into a public-vs.-private battle, with Republicans looking to cut bloated federal programs and Democrats blaming not-always-accountable federal contractors.
In a nearly four-hour hearing, committee Republicans and fiscally conservative witnesses listed a host of government programs and offices that should be cut, eliminated, privatized, or more highly scrutinized.
Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., cited the pay and benefits of federal employees while others cited waste in the Recovery Act or billions lost in improper payments through Medicare and Medicaid.
“The president’s [fiscal 2012] budget adds approximately 15,000 employees to the federal payroll at a time when private sector unemployment has remained above 9 percent for the longest duration since the Great Depression,” Issa said.
But Democrats, led by ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., repeatedly directed the conversation back to federal contractors. Cummings cited the Government Accountability Office’s 2011 High-Risk List, released on Wednesday, which included six programs directly related to federal contracting.
“When you examine all of these together, they have a massive impact, accounting for hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars every year,” Cummings said. . . .
Thomas Schatz, president of the advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste, called on Congress to defund the Export-Import Bank, which is charged with aiding foreign exchange; the Essential Air Service, which provides subsidies to continue airline service in less populated regions; and the Agriculture Department’s Market Access Program, which helps farmers and growers promote U.S. products overseas.
Schatz also recommended repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors to pay the prevailing wage on federal construction projects costing more than $2,000. “The mandate raises the cost of government projects by 15 percent and costs taxpayers more than $1 billion annually, not including $100 million in administrative costs,” he said.
Others offered even bolder proposals. Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, argued the private sector rather than the government is best-suited to run Amtrak, the U.S. Postal Service and the air traffic control system.

Darrell Issa: Unintimidated

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“Issa to investigate Obama? They must be scared to death of what Issa could learn. They must be scared to death of what Issa could produce, because they’re now out to do what they did to Robert Bork. Go down the list, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, any number of people, Ken Starr. Now it is Darrell Issa’s turn.”
— Rush Limbaugh, Wednesday, Feb. 16

As couple days ago, I blogged about the Left’s smear campaign against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) the newly-installed chairman of the House Oversight Committee. It’s apparent that these tactics won’t stop Issa, who has just subpoenaed records relating to the Countrywide mortgage scandal:

The chairman of a House oversight panel issued a broad subpoena Wednesday seeking documents related to a controversial VIP lending program run by Countrywide Financial Corp., with the goal of finding out which public officials benefited.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) sent the subpoena to Bank of America Corp. (BAC) , which acquired Countrywide in 2008. Countrywide’s former chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, has long faced allegations that he approved loans for favored borrowers in violation of the company’s lending policies.
The subpoena is Issa’s first as chairman of the oversight panel after Republicans assumed control of the House last month. Issa had clashed in fall 2009 with the committee’s former Democratic Chairman, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) over whether to investigate the program. Towns ultimately agreed to a narrower subpoena.
Towns received two mortgage loans under the program, The Wall Street Journal reported in August 2009. At the time, he contended that he had no knowledge that he was in the program and didn’t receive any special treatment.
The loan program, known as “Friends of Angelo,” provided loans at rates and terms more favorable than what Countrywide offered to the general public. Lawmakers have been scrutinizing whether those VIP loans were also aimed at influencing public officials.

(Via Jammie Wearing Fool and Instapundit.) Here is Issa’s official statement on the investigation:

“Countrywide orchestrated a deliberate and calculated effort to use relationships with people in high places in order to manipulate public policy and further their bottom line to the detriment of the American taxpayers even at the expense of its own lending standards,” said Issa. “This subpoena will allow us to obtain the information needed to answer the outstanding public interest questions regarding the full size and scope of the VIP program. The American people have a right to know the totality of who participated in the Countrywide’s VIP program and what they did in return for access to it. Our role is to get all of the facts so that the American people can judge for themselves who should be held responsible and accountable.”

The differences between the Issa probe and the limited investigation conducted under Towns’s chairmanship are explained by Politico‘s Jake Sherman:

Last year, the subpoena directed Bank of America to give all documents identifying House members to the House Ethics Committee. This year, the subpoena directs all documents to the Oversight Committee.
Also, whereas last year the committee spared senators — who are governed by their chamber’s ethics panel — this year they will be part of Issa’s probe. Issa’s aides would not say they’ll shield senators who might surface in the probe — last year they said they’d hand documents over to the Senate ethics committee — although they don’t have the authority to punish them.

Two words: Chris Dodd. In 2009, when I was covering the “IG-Gate” story — the pattern of Obama administration pressure against inspectors general — the reluctance of the Democratic majority to conduct serious oversight investigations was obvious:

Behind closed doors on Capitol Hill last week, I asked a Republican source about the investigative efforts of Democratic staffers for the House Oversight Committee.
“Honestly?” the source said. “They’re useless.” . . .
Despite the “grave concerns” expressed by Towns and Issa three weeks ago [about the unexpected retirement of the Amtrak IG], however, Republican sources on Capitol Hill have complained that Democratic staffers on the Oversight Committee have not shown much zeal for the investigation. Sources say Democratic staffers have skipped meetings and conference calls to which they were invited by GOP investigators, who are attempting to work with Grassley’s staff in order to prevent unnecessary duplication of efforts. Sharing documents and scheduling interviews with witnesses, allowing Republican and Democratic investigators from both chambers an opportunity to question these witnesses, is a demanding logistical task. And GOP staffers complain that this task seems to be lacking in terms of bipartisanship.

Now with the GOP in the majority, Issa has a much larger investigative staff and, most importantly, wields subpoena power and the chairman’s authority to schedule public hearings. This is going to be the “action” committee to keep an eye on in coming months. Continue reading Darrell Issa: Unintimidated →

Surprise: Supporters of Most ‘Transparent’ Administration Launch Smear Campaign Against GOP Congessman Investigating Most ‘Transparent’ Administration

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Because they’re all about the transparency!

Democrats are understandably obsessed with Darrell Issa — he’s built himself up as a one-man investigative machine aimed straight at the Obama presidency.
But a handful of liberal political operatives . . . are taking their anti-Issa passion to a whole new level, launching a nonprofit group, a website and even paid media advertisements aimed at undermining and investigating the rabble-rousing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
They say they’re leaving no stone unturned in digging into Issa’s personal and business history. . . .
The purpose of this new group is to . . . make life difficult for Issa and sow seeds of doubt on his investigations.
They plan to run TV advertisements and other paid media in the future, saying they already have a “significant commitment” of cash. . . .
The group will be run by the principals of SCN Strategies, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. . . . One of those deeply involved is Averell “Ace” Smith — who ran Hillary Clinton’s successful 2008 California and Texas primary operations and is known as one of the more cutthroat political operatives in the business.
Dan Newman of SCN Strategies, one of the three people leading the anti-Issa campaign, declines to disclose how much is being spent on the effort or who is bankrolling it . . .

If it weren’t for double standards, liberals would have no standards at all.