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In the weeks leading up to President Trump’s announcement of hefty new tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum imports, one-time White House advisor and billionaire investor Carl Icahn sold off over $30 million of stock in Manitowoc Company—a crane manufacturer that relies on imported steel.
This is just the latest example of Icahn’s actions that raises questions about blurred ethical boundaries in an Administration where the line between personal profit and policy priorities appears muddied all too often.
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See coverage of our analysis:
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As a Senator, Jeff Sessions was far more involved than previously known in helping two top contributors derail an EPA cleanup effort, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Mother Jones and POGO.
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The Pentagon's claim that Congress lacks the power to limit U.S. involvement in the Yemeni civil is yet another encroachment on Congress’s constitutional authority over the military.
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A Department of Defense Inspector General report investigating allegations that the Air Force illegally retaliated against one of the pilots concerned about F-22 hypoxia issues reveals how difficult it is to protect military whistleblowers.
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It’s hard to believe that a young American getting her driver’s license this year has lived in the shadow of the U.S. war in Afghanistan her entire life. What does that teach her about her country, and its military?
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POGO in the News
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“If the Pentagon is really serious about making the F-35 affordable, they will stop buying them until the design has been completed and verified effective,” said Dan Grazier at the Project On Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog.
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This is not the first request for OSC to review O'Rielly's CPAC comments. The Project On Government Oversight, an ethics watchdog, said last week it was requesting an investigation.
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Of the 73 inspector general offices housed in various government agencies and departments, 14 of them are vacant or lead by temporary appointees, according to the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group.
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“Looks like the Marine Corps negotiated a settlement and paid money for something that they were either unwilling or unable to enforce,” Jensen said. “I would bet red tape or poor negotiating created a situation where an individual got paid to stay away but is still able to draw a paycheck from the Corps. Doesn’t sound like a responsible use of taxpayer money.”
Congress should prod the Marines, and other government agencies, to be more transparent about cash settlements, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, a good-government watchdog group.
"Congress should be looking at all federal agencies to make disclosures about settlement amounts and and where they come from," Smithberger said. "Congress needs to make sure it does not cover up misconduct."
The report, which Smithberger reviewed, shows problems may be deeper at Quantico because several employees feared reprisal lodging complaints.
"At the very least this report seems to be skeptical of complainants, if not biased against them," Smithberger said.
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The requirement that an employee recuse himself or herself on issues that could help their side business provides some oversight on the situation, Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, told Bloomberg Environment.
“There are checks and balances on this,” he said. But the possibility that Perrotta may have given helped his business partner obtain an exclusive contract with the EPA is troubling, Amey said.
“It could be an ethics issues as well as a contracting problem,” he said. “Sole-source” or “no-bid” contracts between a company and the federal government are allowed under certain circumstances but often frowned upon because it reduces competition.
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On March 5, the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, sent a letter to the SEC to investigate Icahn's Manitowoc share sales.
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“Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous individuals out there who will take advantage of a wartime emergency, even one involving the lives and safety of our troops, to pad their own pockets,” Dan Grazier, a former Marine who is currently an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Beast.
[...] In the meantime, it’s unclear how many other William Whytes are out there, cheating American servicemembers and taxpayers. “This is just one of the many reasons why we need to have effective oversight of the DoD acquisition process,” Grazier said.
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Add to this the $1.5 trillion slated to be spent on F-35s that the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight has noted may never be ready for combat and the unnecessary “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal, including a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines, and missiles at a minimum cost of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. In other words, a large part of the Pentagon’s new funding will do much to fuel good times in the military-industrial complex but little to help the troops or defend the country.
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President Trump recently proposed opening large areas of U.S. waters to drilling. One goal is more revenue for the government. However, an investigation by the Project On Government Oversight suggests the Interior Department is losing out on billions of potential dollars thanks to a flawed bidding process that undervalues certain tracts. David Hilzenrath, POGO’s Chief Investigative Reporter, joined Eric White on Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk more about the investigation.
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“Some of the problem is the result of President Trump’s pledge to do things differently in Washington,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.
“He has brought people into public service that are new to government and what we’re seeing is some of the differences between public service and what might be acceptable in the business world. Unfortunately that can be a recipe for waste and abuse and the taxpayer ends up holding the bill.”
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The Government Accountability Project and the Project on Government Oversight on March 2 teamed up to send a letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats saying that Dan Meyer—who is on administrative leave pending a decision on his future by Coats’ deputy—deserves a delay until a new intelligence community inspector general is sworn in.
“Staff and leadership hostile to robust whistleblowing programs may use this period of time to ‘dig in’ and front-load their agencies with freshly minted hires in order to limit the exercisable authority of new confirmees,” the groups wrote, sending copies to the congressional intelligence and homeland security panels as well as the Senate Whistleblower Caucus. “Likewise, valued executives may be terminated just short of a new confirmee’s arrival to prevent those executives from assisting the new leadership.”
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Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP and Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) today announced they have filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of four former FBI whistleblowers, the National Whistleblower Center, and the Project On Government Oversight. The brief urges the Supreme Court to hear Parkinson v. Department of Justice so that the Court can ensure military veterans working at the FBI receive the protections from whistleblower retaliations that they deserve and that Congress provided to them.
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Last month, POGO issued a report that criticizes the entire leasing process and calls for reforms aimed at increasing competition. Rule changes enacted in 1983, the group says, opened vast expanses of the Gulf to leasing instead of smaller, more-targeted areas. As a result, the vast majority of Gulf tracts that have received bids received only one.
And that, the group says, has impacted the prices oil companies pay the public for drilling rights. Adjusted for inflation, the average price companies paid since 1983 has declined from $9,068 to $391 per acre in each Gulf auction, a 95.7 percent decline.
“The flaws in the offshore leasing system cost taxpayers billions of dollars in potential revenue that the government could have spent on infrastructure or used to reduce citizens’ tax burdens,” Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director, said in a news release. “The Trump administration shouldn’t double down on a system that has already been a bad deal for the American public for over three decades.”
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Scott Amey, General Counsel at the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group, maintains that the president can't meet his reasonable ethical obligations without selling his stake in his own company.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Amey referred to hotel profits from foreign governments as 'foreign gifts that violate the Constitution,' saying the $151,470 check 'is a tiny step in the right direction, but is not a valid solution.'
'I hope that the courts and Congress will address ethics gaps that have been exposed,' Amey said.
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Last week a government ethics watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, also asked for an investigation regarding O'Rielly's comments at CPAC.
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