I
strongly support the Inspector General
Access Act and the bipartisan work of Senators Durbin and Lee to bring
greater accountability to DOJ attorneys.
Congress
created inspectors general to be independent.
They
don’t just investigate whatever their agency or Congress might want them to.
The
law says that inspectors general shine a light on the waste, fraud and abuse in
federal agencies.
Sometimes
transparency is uncomfortable. But it’s extremely necessary.
You’re
not going to get real accountability if you have agency employees policing
themselves.
Right
now, the only folks who can investigate Justice Department attorneys are other
Justice Department attorneys.
This
system erodes public trust and creates clear conflicts of interest.
For
example, Justice Department attorneys reviewed the plea agreement given to
serial child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
I
note that many of my colleagues here found that internal review “substantively
inadequate.”
Had
the Inspector General conducted the review, he might have gotten somewhere, just
like he did with the behavior of FBI agents in the Larry Nasser case.
What
if we had left that investigation to the FBI to police itself?
This
is why the Justice Department Inspector General has identified, as the agency’s
number one top management challenge, “strengthening public trust” in the
Justice Department.
One
way to fix that is to make sure the independent inspector general has the same
authority over all department employees.
Why
do FBI analysts and DEA agents require more independent scrutiny than department
attorneys?
