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 Mike Pompeo—while endangering cooperating witnesses
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.
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. A conservative website alleged this week that Linick had “weaponized” his role, questioning at least one of the fired inspector general’s finished probes.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.to Akard, several top Democrats in the House asked him to resign as acting inspector general, arguing that his conflicts of interest could “prohibit” him from “having the independence necessary to conduct fair and rigorous oversight of the department and the secretary.” They also bemoaned Linick’s firing, one of several moves by President Donald Trump to oust or sideline various inspectors general. “This assault on the integrity and independence of inspectors general appears to be an intentional effort to undermine their ability to expose corruption and protect taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse,” wrote the lawmakers, among them Rep. Eliot Engel , who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney , who leads the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. On Friday, Engel, Maloney and Sen. Bob Menendez announced they would expand a probe into Linick’s firing by requesting testimony from several top aides to Pompeo. Among those likely to be summoned is Brian Bulatao, the undersecretary of State for management, who has defended Linick’s ouster. 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.Inside the State Department – even within the inspector general’s own office – concerns over new acting IG Stephen Akard have only grown since he showed up in his new role. | Alex Wong/Getty Images 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. 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.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. When asked about these potential conflicts of interest, Akard has offered a “head-scratching” take, a person familiar with the situation told POLITICO. Akard has said that, in reality, Bulatao 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. Akard did not directly respond to questions from POLITICO on this explanation or other aspects of his jobs. But over the past two weeks, he has sent mixed signals to the inspector general’s staff while also getting something of an education in what it means to be an independent watchdog. 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 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. Akard also has acknowledged that he may have to recuse himself from certain matters. While those answers may calm worries somewhat, there’s still dread about the details. State Department staffers point out that Akard doesn’t have to end ongoing probes outright to effectively kill them. 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. Even if Akard doesn’t publicly scrap those investigations, he could reassign the staff looking into them, or simply sit on the findings and not release them, State Department officials said. In their letter to Akard, Democrats appeared to foresee this possibility, and they asked for a list of all the open probes and the expected timeframe for completion.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. “I spoke with investigators, and they assured that the names will not be revealed,” one employee told POLITICO. “We should be granted this protection. I hope that the IG’s office will adhere to the standards.” 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.” While Akard’s relationship with Pence and position in the State Department’s hierarchy have raised concerns, staffers are aware that he previously served as a Foreign Service officer – doing stints in places like India and Belgium – and so might have a sense of the challenges they face. Pompeo has acknowledged asking Trump to fire Linick but denied that he did so to retaliate over any investigations that affected him or his wife. He’s complained instead about leaks that he suspected came out of the inspector general’s office, though there’s no publicly known proof the office or Linick were the source of the leaks. In a Thursday interview with Fox News, Pompeo indirectly made it clear what he would like to see in an inspector general when he hinted that Linick was too independent. “He was acting in a way that was deeply inconsistent with what the State Department was trying to do,” Pompeo said of Linick. “We tried to get him to be part of a team that was going to help protect his own officers from Covid-19; he refused to be an active participant. He was investigating policies he simply didn’t like. That’s not the role of an inspector general … This was about an IG who was attempting to undermine the mission of the United States Department of State. That’s unacceptable.” A representative for Linick, who had served as the inspector general since 2013, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Pompeo’s assertions. But the fact that the chief U.S. diplomat has been so public about what he views as the proper role of an inspector general worries staffers who fear Akard will internalize the message. There also are concerns on Capitol Hill and beyond that Akard will seek ways to undermine Linick’s past, completed investigations that may have upset Pompeo and some of his top aides. One such investigation determined that top political appointees in the State Department had acted inappropriately in pushing a U.S.-born civil servant out of her job in the Policy Planning office, and that her Iranian ancestry may have played a role. While Pompeo was not secretary of State at the time, one of his current top aides, Brian Hook, was involved in the case, and the inspector general recommended he be punished. Pompeo has refused to move against Hook, who serves as his envoy for Iran issues. Hook has been furious with Linick over the
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