Blistering letter from 70 current Inspectors General (including DOJ’s) says the OLC opinion that blocked sharing of whistleblower complaint with Congress “creates a chilling effect on effective oversight and is wrong as a matter of law and policy.” ignet.gov/sites/default/…
“The legal authorities cited in his letter also support the ICIG’s determination that the whistleblower raised a claim of a serious or flagrant problem that relates to an intelligence activity within the DNI’s jurisdiction.”
“It surely cannot be the case that the DNI has responsibilities related to foreign election interference but is prohibited from reviewing the cause of any such alleged interference.”
“DNI has jurisdiction over the handling of classified and other sensitive information. As a result, the whistleblower’s allegation that certain officials may have misused an intelligence system also raises an additional claim of a serious or flagrant problem...”
“...that relates to the operations of the DNI and therefore may properly be considered an urgent concern under the statute.”
“OLC did not find that production to Congress was limited due to a valid constitutional concern. Rather, OLC substituted its judgment and reversed a determination the statute specifically entrusted to the ICIG because of its independence, objectivity, and expertise”
“OLC’s opinion undermines the independence of the ICIG and wrongly interprets the respective roles and responsibilities of IGs and agency heads under the ICWPA.”
“Perhaps most concerning to the IG community, we believe that the OLC opinion creates uncertainty for federal employees and contractors across government about the scope of whistleblower protections, thereby chilling whistleblower disclosures.”
This is really pretty extraordinary. The federal government’s current Inspectors General essentially unanimously saying, in the bluntest possible language, that the DOJ legal rationale for suppressing the whistleblower complaint was wrong on every level.
Politely unstated subtext: If the people who are presumably most knowledgable about the law governing whistleblower procedure unanimously say the OLC memo gets it wrong on multiple levels, it seems less plausible to explain this as a good faith error.
Or more bluntly: To get it this wrong, you really kinda have to be trying.
I can’t think of any remotely comparable precedent for such a strongly worded repudiation of an OLC opinion with such a broad consensus behind it. Very curious to see how DOJ responds, because they pretty much HAVE to respond.
