The Democratic chairs of the House Committee on Oversight and the House Homeland Security Committee sharply criticized the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general on Tuesday for refusing to testify or share paperwork associated to his workplace’s dealing with of missing Secret Service texts, in line with a letter despatched to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.
The committees have beforehand urged Cuffari to recuse himself from the investigation into the missing textual content messages despatched by Secret Service staff across the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, revolt on the U.S. Capitol, largely as a result of he didn’t notify Congress that the messages have been missing till over a yr after he knew they’d been misplaced.
Cuffari refused to recuse himself, testify earlier than the committee, present paperwork or enable his staff to be interviewed, in line with the letter despatched by the 2 committee chairs Tuesday.
“Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an Inspector General,” the letter from Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Bennie Thompson stated. “If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternate measures to ensure your compliance.”
The committees have subpoena energy to compel people to testify or hand over paperwork as a part of Congressional investigations. The committees allege Cuffari is in violation of the Inspector General Act for not complying with his reporting obligations to Congress.
Cuffari, a Trump appointee, has been within the place of DHS inspector general since July 2019. According to emails obtained by the committees, Cuffari’s deputy, Thomas Kait, retracted DHS’s request for the missing textual content messages in July 2021, then later criticized the company for shedding them.
Maloney and Thompson are additionally in search of information on whether or not Cuffari “censored findings” in one other investigation associated to home abuse and sexual harassment by DHS staff, in line with the letter.