The conservative media and blogosphere think they have an explosive story on their hands. President Obama illegally fired a whistleblower for investigating Obama's friend and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, conservatives charge. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wants to investigate the "murky" details of Obama's reasons for firing Gerald Walpin, Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
But here are the cold-hard facts:
President Obama did not "illegally" fire Walpin. To fire an IG, according to the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008, the president must inform Congress 30 days before terminating the IG's employment as well as provide Congress with a reason for doing so.
Obama suspended Walpin with pay and informed him that he would be terminated after 30 days. Obama wrote Congress to inform them of this decision and supplied his reasoning for doing so. Congress does not get to grade this reason, they just have to read it. The 'liberal media' has largely ignored this fact.
Assuming the validity of Obama's reasoning mattered at all, he was still right to fire Walpin.
U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown wrote a letter to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency condemning Walpin's actions during his investigation of Kevin Johnson. Brown accused Walpin of overstepping his authority, compromising his impartiality, and withholding information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
"The Inspector General is not intended to act as an advocate for suspension and debarment," Brown wrote. "He sought to act as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier."
These claims were echoed by Obama Counsel Norman Eisen in the letter he wrote to the Senate Committee that oversees AmeriCorps.
Eisen wrote that Walpin had engaged in "troubling and inappropriate conduct," and had become "disruptive to agency operations. He stated that Walpin was dismissed from his post "after unanimous request from the AmeriCorps board of directors."
It's clear that Obama did not violate the law in firing Walpin and that he had ample reason to fire him.
Nevertheless, conservatives claim that the firing was political.
Was it political when President Bush "quietly forced out" IG Luise S. Jordan? Jordan served as IG of the CNCS just like Walpin. The Washington Post reported in 2002:
...recently two inspectors general were quietly forced out of their jobs, causing a ripple of anxiety within the IG community.
They were both given the bad news on Valentine's Day. According to Luise S. Jordan, the IG at the Corporation for National and Community Service since 1994, she was summoned to a meeting with Ed Moy, an associate director in the presidential personnel office.
"I was told I had done a good job. I was complimented on the achievements of my office, but the second paragraph, after all these compliments and making it clear this was not a dismissal for cause, was that the corporation had decided to get a new IG," Jordan recalled.
The same day, Roberta L. Gross, the IG at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since 1995, was given a similar message by NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe.
"He said the White House was in the process of selecting somebody else" for the IG job, Gross said. "He said it was time to move on."
Bush didn't violate the law in replacing these IGs, but their firings were clearly political, which is why it's so disingenuous for conservatives to now cry "politics" over the firing of an IG who was either overzealous, partial, inept, or all of the above.
I've got a number of background posts on the Gerald Walpin firing and conservative media distortions, if you're interested, which can be read here, here, here, and here.