10:40 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
As WND reported, the White House fired Walpin from his watchdog position over the Corporation for National and Community Services shortly after the inspector general exposed sexual misconduct and gross misappropriation of federal funds by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a prominent Barack Obama supporter.
Independent federal inspectors general, however, are supposed to be granted special protection from political interference or retaliation – thanks in part to a law co-sponsored by then-Sen. Barack Obama – to ensure they are free to investigate waste and fraud uninfluenced by political cronyism.
Congressmen Grassley and Issa, however, issued a report suspecting Obama of violating his own law.
"Throughout our investigation of Mr. Walpin's removal, the White House has repeatedly communicated that the president was not motivated by inappropriate political reasons," said Issa. "The fact is Gerald Walpin led an aggressive investigation of a political ally of President Obama that successfully recovered taxpayer dollars. While firing an investigator who uncovered the abuse of funds by a political ally might be considered an act of 'political courage' in Chicago politics, for most Americans it raises troubling questions."
Walpin had sued the CNCS in July of last year, seeking reinstatement. Dozens of procedural steps and court filings later, however, the judge has refused to take any action on the case, save granting the defense an extension and denying a preliminary injunction request that would have required the CNCS to supply affidavits and documents in its defense.
Now Walpin is petitioning a higher court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to issue a writ of mandamus directing Judge Roberts to either promptly resolve the outstanding motions in the lawsuit or transfer the case to a judge who can.
According to court filings, Walpin "brings this petition reluctantly, and only after trying by every other means reasonable available to try to break the logjam in his case."
The documents also cite Grassley and Issa's report, before declaring the judge "need not have allowed such unlawfulness to continue and should, at the very least, have ensured that the substantive questions be timely tried."
The origins of 'Walpingate'
In 2008, Walpin was overseeing an investigation of St. HOPE Academy, a charter school founded and operated by Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and self-described friend of Barack Obama. Walpin referred Johnson to the U.S. attorney's office for criminal and civil prosecution for "false and fraudulent conduct in connection with $845,018.75 in federal funds."
According to Walpin's referral, St. HOPE used members of AmeriCorps – which is run by CNCS – for political campaigning to re-elect Board of Education incumbents, and the hours spent on those elections were improperly recorded as AmeriCorps service hours.
"The money was given to St. HOPE to finance AmeriCorps members, who are basically volunteers that they call members, to do tutoring in schools among disadvantaged students," Walpin told Eric Hogue of Hogue News. "My investigation found they didn't use the AmeriCorps members for tutoring; they used them to drive Mr. Johnson around, to wash his car, to do all sorts of janitorial and administrative work [that] the money wasn't given to them for."
Johnson's eligibility to receive federal grants was consequently suspended on Sept. 24, 2008.
Despite Johnson's proven misconduct, the voters of Sacramento elected him mayor less than two months later. But when, in February 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the city of Sacramento's eligibility to receive stimulus funds under ARRA was thought to be threatened by Johnson's suspension.
The U.S. attorney's office, headed by acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown, negotiated a favorable settlement for Johnson that reinstated his eligibility to receive federal funds.
According to Grassley's and Issa's report, however, the settlement included "no meaningful guarantee" that the United States would ever actually collect any payments from St. HOPE, which was saddled with the bulk of the settlement.
Last May, Walpin, who had been shut out of the settlement negotiations by Brown, complained to the board that oversees AmeriCorps funding, prompting Brown to file a complaint against Walpin.
Three weeks later, Walpin received a phone call from the White House telling him to resign or be fired. Walpin refused the phone ultimatum and was fired 45 minutes later, despite a law requiring the president to give 30-days notice to Congress before removing an IG and to explain the reasons for doing so.
And while the firing alone was enough to trigger Grassley's demand for an investigation and an initial report in June 2009, documents cited in Grassley and Issa's final, joint report cast the firing in an even more political light:
- Brown, sometimes referred to in the press as a Republican critic of Walpin, actually left the GOP in 1988 and registered as a Democrat through 2007.
- Brown wrote a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in the midst of the Johnson investigation, laying out his qualifications for and seeking a political appointment to the U.S. attorney position. The congressional investigation report concludes, "It would be reasonable for an already skeptical public to wonder whether Brown excluded Inspector General Walpin from negotiations and settled the St. HOPE matter with Johnson in order to curry favor with the White House because Brown wanted the president to appoint him."
- Brown and Matthew Jacobs, Kevin Johnson's attorney, frequently exchanged informal emails deriding and scoffing over Walpin, emails the report states "do not suggest an appropriately arm's length negotiating relationship." Further, the report states, "Together with his efforts to obtain a political appointment from the president, Brown's communications with Johnson's attorney contribute to the appearance that Walpin's removal was more about his vigorous pursuit of the St. HOPE matter than about any other legitimate, unrelated factors."
- An internal memo that reveals that the White House considered issues in deciding to remove Walpin that it did not disclose in the official notice to Congress, including a complaint about Walpin's investigation of another Obama political ally in New York.
Grassley and Issa concluded, "None of the documents produced after the publication of our initial report undermine or conflict with the conclusions of the [final] report. Arguably, some of the new documents could actually reinforce the public perception that the inspector general was removed for political reasons.
"In particular, the revelation that the acting U.S. attorney was seeking a presidential appointment at the time he filed a complaint against Walpin puts that complaint in a different light," they continue. "Moreover, the fact that the White House allowed the documents to be withheld for so long and that it required so much effort to finally obtain them also suggests a lack of transparency that is inconsistent with the goals repeatedly articulated by President Obama for a more open and accountable administration."
The Court of Appeals has issued an order for all sides in the Walpin lawsuit to submit response to Walpin's filing within the next seven days.
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