Attorney General Loretta Lynch has no intention of reversing the Justice Department’s defiance of the Inspector General Act. She made that clear during a House Judiciary oversight hearing last month. Indeed, her own Office of Legal Counsel has issued a badly flawed opinion that insists DOJ and FBI officials can, at their discretion, withhold information from the Justice Department’s inspector general — the individual tasked by Congress with investigating those very same officials.
This is an all too “transparent” continuation of the administration’s habit of trying to hide what the government is doing from Congress, the public, the media, and those who are supposed to be policing the executive branch.
Congress created the federal Inspector General (IG) system in the 1970s to combat problems of “waste, fraud, and abuse within designated federal departments and agencies.” Then-President Jimmy Carter said the IGs would be “the most important new tools in the fight against fraud,” and that “their ultimate responsibility is not to any individual but to the public interest.”
Only with independence and absolute access to internal information can the IGs fulfill their intended purpose. And the IG Act of 1978 could not be clearer.