The NPR Politics Podcast - Homeland Security Staff Want Biden To Oust Watchdog, A Trump Pick

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Joseph Cuffari, the Trump-appointed leader of the Department of Homeland Security's watchdog agency, has been in office for three years. During that tenure, the majority of lawyers in the Office of Counsel have left. The pattern has hurt the attorneys' abilities to to conduct their oversight work. Now, some staffers have called on President Biden, who previously criticized Trump's dismissal of agency watchdogs, to fire Cuffari.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey Atlanta, it's Asma Khalid from the NPR Politics Podcast. We are going to be live on stage doing our show Thursday, October 20th at 8 p.m. at the Buckhead Theater. And we'd love for you to be there. Ticket info is at nprpresents.org. Thanks to our partners, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WABE, and WCLK Jazz. See you there. Hi, this is Stacey, a social studies teacher from Pennsylvania, presently in Istanbul, Turkey, listening to the beautiful call to prayer. This was recorded at 12.06 p.m. Central Time, Wednesday, October 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be enjoying this amazing city. Okay, here's the show.

That is really beautiful. That is gorgeous. One of my favorite cities in the world was there back in June. Great place. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Okay, Claudia. And today we're going to be talking about a story you've been reporting on. It's about the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General who took office more than three

years ago. And since then, the majority of lawyers, more than 30 in the Office of Counsel, have left, according to multiple sources and internal documents reviewed by NPR. And that's left career staff assigned to the watchdog's Office of Counsel to contend with a revolving door that has hindered oversight of DHS. Claudia, this has been your stellar reporting. Can you just like tell us what's going on? Right. Yeah, I started talking to sources recently, seven in all in the end, who are familiar with the inner workings of the DHS IG office, the Inspector General's office. And they said that Joseph Kafari, this is the Inspector General who heads up that agency

of about or more than 700 workers, that Khafari has fueled organizational dysfunction and abused his power. Now NPR agreed to withhold their names because they fear professional retaliation. Also, what I heard from these sources is that essentially this watchdog agency is too cozy with leaders and the agencies that DHS oversees. For example, that this inspector general has slow walked a retaliation complaint and hasn't really addressed widespread sexual misconduct allegations, among other things. Before we go any further, can you tell us like how Khafari got his job and like what his sort of background was before this? So Khafari was appointed by former President Trump in 2018. And he took over the role by July of 2019. The following year, he was confirmed by voice vote in the Senate. He had impressed senators when he went through his confirmation process. But there is a question

that remains. It's unclear why he was considered qualified to take over this position. So how he got this job in the end, in terms of what propelled him to the front of the pack for Trump to notice him and appoint him to such a key role, that question remains to be answered. And he'd actually, he served in the Justice Department's Inspector General office. Right, exactly. So the House Oversight Committee touched on this as one of the key panels keeping an eye on these concerns surrounding Kafari now. They released a 2013 memo tied to an internal probe looking into Kafari's previous work there as a special agent for the Justice Department's Inspector General Office. The memo said Khafari had violated agency

requirements and federal ethics regulations, that he used his public office to benefit his personal associates. And then soon after that probe was completed by the Justice Department, Khafari retired from that job. Curious that he ended up being appointed by President Trump and then that the Senate signed off on it as well. Exactly. Between then and this position he has now, he worked in political circles in Arizona. But again, that connection of how he got to this position, as you say, Ryan, is curious. And I think it'd be helpful just to remind folks just how sweeping the responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security are. Exactly. So this agency has a budget of tens of billions of dollars and includes agencies that

are often in the public eye, and that includes the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, among other. And so this inspector general is supposed to make sure that tax dollars are spent as Congress intends. So there's a lot of pressure on this office. And so far, Qafari is what I'm hearing from these sources and from other reporting that we've seen out there has not been meeting the mark over and over again. So the January 6th committee heard testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson about how there had been an altercation in the president's vehicle after his speech at the Ellipse and how he wanted to go up to the Capitol. The Secret Service didn't want to take him there. There was allegedly an altercation in the car. The January 6th committee later got other testimony from other witnesses corroborating

more or less what Hutchinson had said. Exactly. So we've seen multiple probes from Congress looking into the January 6th attack, what led up to it. In particular, the January 6th committee was looking into the Secret Service. Increasingly, this summer, as they were holding these blockbuster hearings, the January 6th committee wants to hear from these agents. They have not about this altercation. So they were looking into messages,

for example, text messages. And it was this summer when Kafari came forward and said, oh, the messages you're looking for from this period surrounding the January 6th attack have been deleted. But members soon found out afterwards that Khafari had known about this for months. Yeah, and it's not like the Secret Service is sort of new to being sort of in scandal. There's sort of a long history of drama with this part of the agency. I mean, dating back at least to the Obama administration, right? Exactly. So they have been dealing with scandal for many years. And although the January 6th committee did obtain emails, for example, that were shared in their most recent hearing in the last few weeks, they are not able to share those text messages. So it's that oversight that's missing right now that could

fill in a lot of gaps that a lot of members in Congress, for example, would like to fill in. And before we move on, I'm wondering, Claudia, I mean, has the Inspector General or anyone in his office responded to your reporting? Have you heard from anyone yet? Yeah, so they did respond in part, but he was limited. The Public Affairs Office for the Watchdog Agency said that many of my questions, I sent a total of 21 questions to the office. I also asked for an interview with Kafari, but they said a lot of these allegations that are being brought up by the sources I spoke to and others that they're tied to internal investigations that are being conducted. They can't comment. However, they did tout Kafari's relationship with workers, saying that the department has gotten good grades on surveys for workers and claiming that he's transformed the office into a model workplace.

All right. Well, let's take a quick break. More in a second. And we're back. Claudia, what recourse do these employees who are upset have, really? They don't have much recourse right now. The inspector general can be replaced. It's an elaborate process for a inspector general to be fired. The president does need to notify Congress, give about a 30-day notice on this process. But at the same time, these workers aren't seeing this happen. A group of them got

together. They wrote an anonymous letter. It was addressed to the president last month asking Biden to fire Khafari and listing out all of the issues they've encountered under his watch since he took over the role in July of 2019. And so aside from whether the White House responds to this letter, so far, they've said they're looking into these concerns. They're familiar with them, but they have not commented in the last several weeks as to what they could do next. But outside of that, they don't have much recourse other than to leave. So is there any sign that Biden's going to heed that warning? I mean, firing a watchdog is a pretty complex political move for a president. Exactly, especially for this president, because as a candidate in 2020, Trump fired

five inspector generals in the matter of just a few months. And so Biden quickly jumped on this as a talking point as he campaigned, saying that that was inappropriate, that his watchdogs are going to be back in his administration. It is a refrain. He's repeated again and again as president. He mentioned it again in his State of the Union address earlier this year. And so it is a very complicated political move for Biden, because while he's pointed out these inspectors general are critical, especially when it comes to oversight of pandemic relief funds, he hasn't gone into other areas specifically such as DHS oversight. So it remains to be seen whether he's going to take that move.

I mean, all of that said, Claudia, this talk about the difficult political situation that might put Biden in to fire someone like Khafari. Firing one inspector general when you've received letters of complaint from employees who work under that IG is different than what we saw President Trump do, right? Exactly. One of the inspectors general that Trump fired was the intelligence community inspector general, who had basically done what he said he was supposed to do in forwarding complaints about the phone call that Trump had had with Zelensky that ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment.

That's a very different situation from the situation that Biden would find himself in here firing, say, one inspector general when you're getting the sort of complaints from employees, from lawmakers about how he's handled his job. So while it would be difficult, and certainly Biden might get some flack from Republicans, there's also a question of whether it wouldn't be beneficial to DHS and the government writ large for Biden to perhaps take the move and get rid of Khafari, right? Right, exactly. He's gotten a lot of encouragement from various segments of the population, including members of Congress themselves, who are worried about what they're seeing and what's been building up over the last several years. And so they see this as an exception to perhaps Biden's

rule that the watchdogs are back. Well, who's watching the watchdogs? So that's the question that's lingering now. I mean, speaking of Congress, I mean, don't they have an oversight role to play here? How have they been talking about all this? Right. So they have been ratcheting up their concerns with Khafari. They asked him and others in the office, his top leaders, to provide documents, to come in and testify, for example, before Congress. But Ghaffari has refused to cooperate. No members of his agency have testified publicly, for example, before Congress. And so they are threatening to take next steps. They haven't been specific. When we talk about House Oversight Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, those two panels are the ones we're kind of watching closely since they're saying that they want to take these next steps. Is that subpoenas? What is that? We don't know at this point, but we expect when Congress comes

back after the elections, we're going to see new traction on this again. You know, it's something that I've seen from covering the Justice Department is the important role that Inspectors General can play. We've had multiple reports from the Justice Department's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, that have made big news because they have uncovered missteps on the part of the FBI or the Justice Department in major investigations. And that's something that we as reporters have benefited from, and it's something that the public has benefited from, getting that sort of information. So there really is a crucial role for inspectors general. And when there are allegations that NIG is perhaps not fulfilling that role, that obviously raises huge concerns.

Right. It kind of points to this blind spot that investigators have when they look at the January 6th investigation and what was Secret Service's role. If Khafari, what I heard from these sources, had helped his career staff propel this investigation sooner in the weeks following the attack, they may have recovered those text messages, but instead he stalled, he blocked, and they lost valuable time. And in the course of these events, they lost these text messages too. Yeah. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.