Why Is Trump's Homeland Security Inspector General Still On The Job?
For all of the spectacular kerfuffle about the inappropriate and perhaps fully corrupt behavior of the DHS Inspector General in covering up the loss of, or choosing not to try to recover, or not reporting the loss to Congress of US Secret Service text messages around January 6, 2021 - almost none of the coverage notes that Mr. Cuffari continues to hold the position of Inspector General at DHS.
Yes that's right.
The DHS website lists Joseph V. Cuffari as the current DHS Inspector General.
Why?
Why does Mr. Cuffari remain in this position?
Why hasn't the Biden Administration removed him, to mitigate any further damage and cover-up?
How much of a vulnerability does Mr. Cuffari present to US homeland security when he remains in office... given such questionable if not flagrantly obstructive behavior?
Mr. Joseph V. Cuffari was a Trump Administration political appointee who came into the position in mid-2019.
Why would the Biden Administration keep an Inspector General who did not bother to pursue evidence related to an extremely significant national security incident?
Why would the Biden Administration keep a DHS Inspector General who failed to apprise Congress of the department's failure to preserve evidence?
How can we trust the law enforcement authority and functionality of this office when Mr. Cuffari remains its leader?
This is what institutional erosion looks like.
Authoritarian regimes tend to erode institutions to weaken their capacity to serve citizens. Authoritarian movements tend to take hold when the social contract in the society is already weakened.
Authoritarians (as Trump intended to be) tend to actively weaken institutions further in order to both demonstrate the supposed ineffectiveness of government, and also to justify seizing more power by saying a so-called "strongman" needs to come in and take control of all the things.
We are not served as Americans if we do not shore up our weakened institutions.
We should be demanding the Biden Administration remove this highly suspicious individual who is running the DHS Office of Inspector General, and clean up the US Department of Homeland Security from the corruption that has clearly been allowed to fester before and since January 6th, 2021. Congress is now asking that Mr. Cuffari resign - but the Biden Administration could make it happen like now.
How much more vulnerable are we in terms of homeland security because this cleanup has not occurred?
Why hasn't it happened?
While Congress has been slow to act in response to the insurrection and coup attempt, the Executive Branch has had 18 months make its own decisions to remove potentially corrupt individuals who are political appointees, and to clean up the agencies as much as possible under executive authorities.
No, you cannot fire career civil servants. If politically aligned officials from the Trump Administration "burrowed in" to civil service jobs, those folks would be harder to remove.
But the Biden Administration can fire political appointees and certain senior executive service (SES) level officials if there is reason to believe they are covering up evidence or obstructing investigations. Many of them could be doing exactly that. They've had plenty of time.
It's well past time.
We're a year and a half in to the Biden Administration.
There's no good reason why some of this cleanup has not occurred. Especially given the flagrant corruption of the Trump Administration.
It is not standard behavior in any case for an Administration to keep the political appointees of the prior administration. They could have been dismissed immediately after the transition on January 20, 2021. Some of the suspicious behavior we're learning about occurred well after that.
And if this one suspicious individual remains in a position critical to law enforcement and homeland security, how many other questionable people were left in office by the by the Biden Administration all over the entire United States government?
How deep is this problem?
Why has it been allowed to continue?
Are the Trump-era political appointees who remain in place also continuing Trump Administration decisions that weaken homeland security? Like undermining attempts to monitor, track, and pursue domestic violence extremists? Like not conveying critical intelligence on domestic violent threats to local law enforcement?
I have questions.
The fact that we're not collectively asking questions like these weakens our homeland security. It also continues to weaken our institutions.
It is critical that we turn this around. We need to be talking about this stuff.
Allowing it to continue is not serving anyone but the corrupt individuals who remain in government, and those who seek to weaken the government that is intended to serve all of the citizens.
And of course, anything that weakens the United States and its institutions also helps those who would seek to further weaken or destroy this massive superpower and the world order it helps to uphold.
We can do better.
We should be demanding it. And we can.
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