Today's Washington Examiner posted an article by Byron York further examining the firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin. On June 10 of this year, Inspector General Gerald Walpin received a telephone call from Norman Eisen, the special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, telling IG Walpin that he had one hour either to resign or be fired. This was in violation of the law that requires the President to give Congress 30 days' notice before dismissing an inspector general. The article referenced above reviews the entire sequence of events that followed. Generally speaking, the White House attempted to cover its tracks and claimed that IG Walpin was fired after an extensive review of his performance by members of the Corporation for National and Community Service [CNCS]. When that claim was investigated, it was found to be untrue.
The article points out:
"Just hours after Sen. Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa released a report Friday on their investigation into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin, the Obama White House gave the lawmakers a trove of new, previously-withheld documents on the affair. It was a twist on the now-familiar White House late-Friday release of bad news; this time, the new evidence was put out not only at the start of a weekend but also hours too late for inclusion in the report."
The article concludes that the reason for the firing of IG Walpin was his aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California who is a prominent political ally of President Obama.
This seems to be another example of the "Chicago Way" that has come to the White House.
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